Turkey and the EU: The Context Changes Again

One obvious characteristic of world affairs today is rapid – possibly accelerating-- change. When I wrote about ‘Turkey and the EU’ for the Academia Europaea meeting in Vienna October 2012, my subtitle was ‘A Changed Context’. In 2012 the EU was still in the grip of the crisis over the euro, which had teetered on the brink of collapse and was only just beginning to look a little more secure. In contrast, Turkey had experienced an amazing economic boom and appeared to have successfully transitioned from an era of secular military rule to a relatively stable elected government (despite some human rights concerns) led by the moderately Islamist Justice and Development (AK) party and its broadly popular Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and President Abdullah Gul. The Middle East was in the throes of the ‘Arab Spring’. The developed world was still largely focused on the task of recovery from the 2008–2009 financial crisis and pondering how to respond to the looming failure of Doha trade talks at the global level. Now, only two years later, the context has changed yet again. The EU, Turkey, the Middle East, and even global trends – all are substantially different. Therefore an ‘Update’ now follows my original text.