‘Sofagate’ Revealed Uncomfortable Truth About EU Turkey Relations

But, after Von der Leyen’s “Erm, what about me?” moment, the EU Commission Spokesperson Eric Manner declared that the incident had “sharpened her focus on women’s rights’ issues”.

The sofa saga likely stems from the diplomatic myopia of the “masters of ceremonies” at the EU Delegation in Ankara. The Turkish presidency merely followed the supposed EU hierarchy, placing the Council above the Commission.

Von der Leyen’s response was designated to recharge the Commission’s batteries and emphasize that her executive is on a par with the political might of the Council.

During Von der Leyen’s tenure, she has arguably moved her position as the Commission President to be co-chair of the EU with Michel. All this is linked with the zeitgeist of the times, in which gender rights issues are placed at the heart of human rights debates.

However, Von der Leyen’s predicament during the Ankara visit is also indicative of a relationship between the EU and Turkey that has gone awry.

As the EU wishes, this relationship has been built mainly on jargon. “Positive agenda”, the buzzword defining the relationship, is all over EU communiqués related to Turkey.

In line with conflict resolution theories, the EU has sought to find a “soft”, workable topic to get negotiations with Turkey ahead. That topic turned out to be the migrant deal, first put into effect in 2016.

In December 2020, Turkey got the last tranches of the approximately 6 billion euros offered to assist Syrian refugees in Turkey. In other words, the deal has now expired, and the EU wants it to renew it, to assure a cordon sanitaire that will prevent refugees from pouring across its borders.

Nevertheless, the migrant deal only covered the Syrians that Turkey hosts, not the refugees and asylum seekers that constitute the bulk of irregular migrants heading to the EU’s borders.

Both Turkey and the EU are aware of the need to assist non-Syrian refugees but are reluctant to do so, so as not to encourage even more migration.

This is just one of many problems about the deal to begin with, which include readmission of refugees from the EU to Turkey, and whether the assistance schemes offered to the Syrians provide actual remedies. Not to mention that the rights of refugee and asylum seekers are increasingly being curtailed.

Von der Leyen and Michel’s visit to Ankara was a step forward to “let the money talk” and renew the deal; it is just a question of “how much”, as far as a new contract is concerned.

To sweeten the deal, the EU also announced that Brussels is ready to engage in negotiations to modernize the current customs union with Turkey, dating from 1995.

Back in the mid-2010s, the World Bank embarked on ways to proceed with the process and presented a detailed report.

Nonetheless, the EU is so unenthusiastic about delving into any serious interaction with Turkey, other than the migrant deal, that modernization of the customs union seemed a remote possibility, until the EU Leaders’ Summit on March 25-26.

At the time, just when the EU was supposed to being considering sanctions on Turkey, the “positive agenda” in vogue since October 2020, and modernization of the customs union, became concrete possibilities.

Then again, when Turkey’s then PM Ahmet Davutoğlu carved out the first migrant deal with the EU in 2015, alongside a customs union update, EU visa liberalization for Turkey was also on the table.

Both were swept slowly under the carpet as Turkey-EU relations failed to move forward an inch after the signing of the migrant deal, and subsequently deteriorated.

Why should things will be any different this time, when structurally things remain the same? Can “Migrant Deal 2.0” change anything, just because the process is dubbed a “positive agenda”?

As the T.S. Elliot poem goes, April may indeed be cruelest month if the “non-positive agenda” between Turkey and the EU – namely the Eastern Mediterranean issue – starts stalling the “positive” one.

Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias’s visit to Ankara on April 15 will be a landmark visit, as the first official meeting between Greece and Turkey since the conflict escalated. Last summer, there was an unofficial meeting in Berlin, but this is the first time Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s government and Turkey are officially meeting.

Exploratory talks between the countries have pushed on without producing anything tangible since this January, but so far, the target has been simply to keep negotiations intact.

On April 27-29, the even more serious “5+1” meeting kicks off in Geneva with the sponsorship of the United Nations, convening Cyprus, Greece, Turkey and Britain as one of the guarantor countries.

As the UN seeks to tackle the intricate and protracted Cyprus Conflict, might Turkey endorse the “two-state solution” to which the Greek Cypriot President Nikos Anastasiades is reportedly sympathetic to?

While Erdogan may wish to brand himself the “resolver of the eternal Cyprus Question” by winning Northern Cyprus’s international recognition, it is a complicated matter and things could go haywire anytime during the process. And Ankara is moodier than ever in its international relations.

Is the EU and Turkey’s “positive agenda” ready for such a stress test, proceeding through tough Eastern Mediterranean questions, and, inter alia, including the Cyprus Conflict?

Even a mild concussion in the coming months may prove troubling for EU-Turkey relations, to say the least – revealing the “positive agenda” as actually just bare bones.

Sezin Öney is s a political scientist and journalist specializing in European affairs.