Does the EU want to expand to include more countries like Turkey, as the Brexit campaign claimed?

Analysis: Turkey may be an EU candidate country, but this is why it isn’t going to join, says Jon Stone

Turkey's President Recep Erdoğan has made little progress on EU accession (AP)

Boris Johnson has landed himself in hot water by claiming he “didn’t make any remarks about Turkey” in the EU referendum.

In fact, the Brexiteer signed a letter to David Cameron with other campaigners claiming that “the only way to avoid having common borders with Turkey is to vote leave”.

The Vote Leave campaign itself used targeted advertisements on Facebook and elsewhere claiming Turkey would be joining the EU, replete with maps highlighting its borders with Iran, Iraq and Syria.

Is Turkey actually going to join the EU?

The short answer is “no”. The long answer is a bit more complicated, but is still “no”.

Turkey is officially a candidate country to join the EU – so you might be forgiven for thinking it is likely to join the EU.

The twist is that it has been a candidate country since 1999, and since then more than a dozen other countries have joined while Turkey has not.

In reality, Turkey’s application has made no progress for years, and has been officially frozen for some time – most recently again in November 2016

Why are talks stalled or frozen?

Turkey is widely perceived to have taken a turn for the authoritarian in recent years under President Recep Erdoğan. As such it does not meet the conditions of membership on human rights grounds. Observers say Turkey is, if anything, moving backwards on the conditions, and that doesn’t look like it will change any time soon.

On paper Erdoğan is still committed to joining the EU, but the accession process is very formal and Turkey has made little progress in meeting milestones set by the bloc.

Additionally, many EU states have similar fears and prejudices to the ones Vote Leave tried to play on in the UK during the EU referendum – the underlying message of which is that a large, mostly Muslim country should not be admitted to the union.

Angela Merkel and other leaders have specifically said they would veto Turkey’s membership. This situation appears unlikely to change for the foreseeable future.

But doesn’t the UK support Turkey’s membership?

Officially, it does. This is because in some respects, Turkish membership is aligned with the UK’s long-term strategic goals.

Benefits include: keeping a large country with an eastern border in the Middle East aligned with western values and norms, and using Turkey’s perceived support for looser economic integration as a brake on the federal ambitions of other member states.

Turkey is also seen as a valuable intelligence partner in an unstable region where the British state sees itself as having strategic interests.

It’s for these reasons that David Cameron repeatedly said the UK supported Turkey’s membership – even though antipathy towards immigration was probably higher on most people’s minds.

Are any other countries going to join the EU?

Yes, that’s on the cards – though they’re mostly smaller. The next states on their way to join the EU are the western Balkans – places like Serbia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Albania.

Some tentative steps have been taken to integrating these countries, but they do have some way to go before they can join. Most do not yet meet conditions on rule of law, economic, and human rights grounds.

They are also all fairly small and could be easily absorbed by the bloc: the EU likes to think it has learned from its previous rapid expansion eastwards, which led to immigration causing disquiet in some member states. Other problems with rule of law in recent joiners such as Hungary and Poland have also caused the EU to be more cautious about accepting new members.

Of the western Balkans, Serbia and Montenegro are both candidate countries who have begun negotiating. Macedonia and Albania are candidates but have not started negotiating, while Bosnia has applied. Kosovo’s sovereign status is disputed but it is a seen as a potential candidate.

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