President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Friday that Türkiye failed to gain speed in its European Union membership process "because of EU’s openly hostile stance."
Addressing an event in remembrance of Turkish republic’s founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in the capital Ankara, Erdoğan said the bloc has become desperate and will "keep knocking on Türkiye’s door," but it was fast losing the "chance of ending its strategic blindness."
Ankara has been critical of a recent EU enlargement report it termed as "biased."
The report, containing an accusatory tone toward Türkiye on democracy and human rights, came at a time of Türkiye’s hope for a revival of ties.
Earlier, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan stated the EU was engaged in a new discussion for enlargement, "under new geopolitical circumstances."
The EU seeks to expand its membership under the shadow of the Ukraine-Russia conflict, seeking more allies.
This week, EU figures convened to talk about new members that might join the union by 2024, like Ukraine and Moldova, without any mention of Türkiye, a formal candidate since 1999.
After EU leaders approved the start of accession talks with Türkiye in 2004, the then-British premier Tony Blair hailed it as a historic event showing no clash of civilizations. But European leaders at the time found themselves stuck in a tussle with Ankara over the divided island of Cyprus.
This crisis proved to be only a glimpse of the turbulent relationship to come.
During Erdoğan’s rule, Türkiye took significant steps to fulfill the criteria for membership of the 27-member bloc, while heightening bilateral relations with EU states.
Yet, ties deteriorated due to the EU's continuing tolerance of terrorist groups, particularly the PKK, which the bloc has outlawed.
It was Erdoğan, again, proposing a revival of ties as he attended a NATO summit in Vilnius last summer.
The EU welcomed Erdoğan’s proposal, but a scathing report angered Ankara, and Erdoğan has stated that they might reconsider the accession bid.
Today, ties are more transactional than a path toward partnership, even if neither side will openly admit this.
For many EU member states, the long-stalled accession talks are dead in all but name.
In September, Austria, long opposed to Türkiye's membership, even called for the process to end. EU officials privately say this would be more honest, but no one wants to make the first move.
After the Turkish elections in May, EU leaders revived hopes for improvement. They ordered the EU's executive arm and its foreign policy chief to prepare a report on how to develop the relationship.
The report is due before December's next summit gathering of EU leaders, but experts and EU officials warn against expecting any real improvement in ties.
There is "Turkish fatigue" in Europe, as Austria's comments show, said the European Parliament's Türkiye rapporteur, Nacho Sanchez Amor.
"We are tired of keeping the accession process alive when, apparently, there is no real political will from the other side to advance on democratic standards," the MEP said.
Amor was behind what Türkiye called a "one-sided, nonobjective" report by the European Parliament that dealt a blow to relations.
The Turkish-EU relationship's transactional nature deepened after the two sides agreed on a deal in 2016 under which the EU threw billions of euros at Ankara to stop migrants coming to Europe after the 2015 refugee crisis.
"Transactional is not a derogatory term," Amor said. "Don't mix the accession process, which has its own rules based on values and principles, with the rest of the relationship."
The report due later this year will likely recommend updating the customs union, for which Türkiye's trade minister was in Brussels in October to drum up support.
Ankara wants equal treatment among candidate countries.