To be or not to be (European)?: time for the EU to get off the fence when it comes to Türkiye and Serbia

The right to demonstrate peacefully is fundamental to any democracy. Those living in healthy democracies shouldn’t have to wait four or five years before they can make their views heard in national elections. If they feel particularly strongly about a particular issue – whether foreign or domestic – they have the right to take to the streets to appeal for support and to get the attention of their governments. The basic compact governing demonstrations is that the demonstrators should be organised, peaceful and not threaten or intimidate others or harm property; while the police should respect the right to protest and not use force to prevent the demonstration or harm those protesting peacefully. When governments use force against demonstrators or the media covering protests, and try to demonise protesters by calling them “terrorists”, “enemies of the state” or insurgents intent on carrying out “colour revolutions” against those in power, justifying disproportionate repressive measures, then the warning sign that those governments are sliding into authoritarianism is unmistakable. This is precisely what is now happening in two EU candidate countries, Türkiye and Serbia.

In Türkiye, backsliding on democratic norms and values has been going on for a long time under the 23-year rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. It is one thing to lock up the leaders of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) insurgent movement, which has been fighting the Turkish state and its army in eastern Anatolia for decades and is responsible for a large number of terrorist attacks and ambushes causing thousands of military and civilian casualties. But it is another thing to ban political parties that represent the Kurdish community in the Turkish Parliament and imprison their leaders who campaign peacefully and advocate peaceful solutions. Yet, this is what has happened to the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which has seen 20,000 of its officials and members taken into custody and 10,000 imprisoned, including the party leader and 2014 Presidential candidate, Selahattin Demirtaş. These arrests took place after the failed military coup of 2016, even though the HDP condemned the coup. In March 2021, Erdoğan tried to prohibit the HDP, although the courts eventually dropped the case against it. Nonetheless, over 100 HDP democratically-elected mayors in southeast Türkiye have been removed by decree and replaced by government appointees. Thousands of Turkish military officers and civil servants were dismissed after the attempted coup, including Turkish officers in the NATO command structure, on unproven accusations that they belonged to the banned social movement of Fethullah Gülen, a former associate of Erdoğan who fell out with him and was living in exile in the United States. As Erdoğan moved in a more autocratic direction, periodic outbursts of popular protest showed a Turkish civil society that refused to bend to his will. Over a decade ago, demonstrators in Istanbul tried to stop Erdoğan from turning the much loved Gezi Park green space in the city centre into a shopping centre and commercial offices. The President compared the protests to a coup and the organisers were rounded up and put in jail. Twelve years on, the government has reopened its Gezi Park investigations, scouring the CCTV footage to identify and haul in for questioning those it can identify, including famous TV stars in Turkish soap operas, and determining which news outlets ‘legitimised’ the protests by not reporting on them in a sufficiently critical manner. Indeed, the man the government accused of being the principal protest leader, the businessman and arts patron, Osman Kavala, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2022. Ankara ignored a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights calling for his release. Türkiye developed the unenviable reputation of being the country that arrested and frequently locked up the largest number of journalists.

Yet, Türkiye also remained a democracy of sorts. Elections took place and Erdoğan and his Justice and Welfare (AK) party delivered impressive economic growth and infrastructure modernisation in their early years in power. They undoubtedly had widespread support from more conservative and pious Turks who felt alienated from the liberal, Western-oriented elites in Istanbul. While liberals felt marginalised, the Erdoğan base of devout Muslims felt liberated, as when women were able to wear the veil in public institutions, something previously forbidden in the secular Türkiye inherited from the founder of the Republic, Kemal Atatürk. Erdoğan also made efforts to reach out to the PKK to try to end the Kurdish insurgency, efforts that he has recently revived. Erdoğan’s firebrand populism goes down well at campaign rallies and many of his supporters feel an almost fanatical sense of identity with him. Yet, this said, in more recent times, gross economic mismanagement, which has produced a slide in the value of the Turkish lira, rampant inflation to almost triple figures and high interest rates, has eroded Erdoğan’s base of support and given opportunities to the opposition. The Republican People’s Party (CHP) party won mayoral contests in the two most important cities of Istanbul and Ankara, holding on to them in the last local elections in 2024. Destabilised by the massive earthquake in southern Türkiye in February 2023, where the collapsed buildings and high death toll were blamed on lax construction regulations and corruption in the building sector, Erdoğan looked vulnerable in the subsequent presidential elections the following May. For the first time, the opposition moved ahead in the opinion polls but then had on-again, off-again attempts to form an alliance of the six opposition parties. They chose an aged and uncharismatic politician as their presidential candidate who proved no match for the experienced Erdoğan, controlling all the machinery of government and a compliant media, on the campaign trail.

Erdoğan has thus emerged as the great survivor. Despite ruling Türkiye for 23 years, like many autocrats he clings to power and, as with most lengthy regimes, those to whom he has dispensed patronage have an interest in things staying as they are as well. Yet, serving more than three presidential terms would require Erdoğan to change the Turkish constitution. This is a big ask given that he would need a two-thirds majority in the Turkish Grand Assembly that the AK party currently lacks. So, the alternative is to call early elections and not wait for the next scheduled elections in 2028. The one problem here is that, for the first time, Erdoğan would face the serious prospect of defeat at the hands of the popular mayor of Istanbul and CHP politician, Ekrem İmamoğlu. So, it was perhaps no coincidence that four days before he was to be chosen by the CHP as its presidential candidate, İmamoğlu was arrested on unspecified corruption charges and placed in pre-trial detention. He has been stripped of his university degree, which is a way of barring him from standing in the election. Erdoğan’s moves against opposition politicians are nothing new, but this time he may have overplayed his hand. Defying the government ban on demonstrations, hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets in protest against İmamoğlu’s arrest across Türkiye, not because they are all supporters of the CHP, but because they see the arrest as the tipping point when Türkiye moves from being an imperfect democracy to an outright authoritarian state. Their slogan has been “Rights, law, justice” as much as calling for a free and fair trial for İmamoğlu. Before this latest incident, there was at least a sense that elections could hold Erdoğan in check, if not the subordinated courts and the obedient media. Now that remaining check has gone too. The demonstrations have gone on for nearly two weeks and are the largest that Türkiye has witnessed for decades. Moreover, a week ago, the CHP organised an impromptu referendum nominating İmamoğlu as their candidate. Fifteen million Turks cast their votes as another way of registering their protest.

The government has responded with its usual toolbox of repressive measures. Tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons against demonstrators, many of whom wear face masks to avoid the Turkish police knocking on their doors the following morning to take them into custody. The 10% of Turkish media not controlled by the government has been heavily censored and no reporting on the protests has been broadcast by the state media. Over 2,000 have been arrested and Turkish prosecutors have so far threatened 84 demonstrators with three years’ imprisonment, a penalty that is massively disproportionate for peaceful protest. Thirteen journalists have also been detained. The veteran Türkiye correspondent of the BBC, Mark Lowen, who speaks Turkish and is well known for his deep knowledge of the country, was deported after just three days as “a threat to national security”. Another journalist, the correspondent of the Swedish newspaper, Dagens ETC, Kaj Joakim Medin, was arrested on terrorism charges, not because of his coverage of the protests in Istanbul, but due to his alleged involvement in the burning of an effigy of Erdoğan in Stockholm in 2023. The President has used his usual strong rhetoric against the demonstrators accusing them of violence and attacking the police. “We will not give in to street terror”, he told Turkish TV. But he has used other tactics as well. The holiday marking the end of Ramadan has been extended to nine days in the hope that as Turks travel to meet their families, the protests will die down. It is also far from clear if the protesters can keep up the momentum of almost daily mass protests and what the CHP’s strategy will be going forward. The party leader, Özgür Özel, has called for an end to the demonstrations outside the Istanbul City Hall after last weekend’s protests. Erdoğan has offered the party an olive branch in the form of a court ruling that has allowed it to appoint another CHP politician as acting mayor of Istanbul. Had İmamoğlu been accused of terrorism, the government would have had the right to appoint its own candidate.

Like many other autocrats across the globe, Erdoğan is counting on the current geopolitical context to divert attention away from Türkiye’s internal strife. Türkiye has the second-largest army in NATO and the West needs its help at the moment. For instance, in implementing a freedom of navigation agreement between Ukraine and Russia in the Black Sea, which would enable both Ukraine and Russia to export their grain, fertiliser and chemicals such as ammonia to international markets via the Turkish Straits. Türkiye was the country that negotiated the original grain deal back in 2022. The European Coalition of the Willing that the UK and France have organised to plan for a reassurance force to be sent to Ukraine to oversee a ceasefire and implement a peace agreement (if they can be achieved) has also involved Türkiye as a key regional player with influence in both Kyiv and Moscow. Türkiye’s modern armaments industry, particularly in the area of drones like those manufactured by Bayraktar, can also make a useful contribution to a European Defence Industry Programme, if a bilateral security agreement between Brussels and Ankara can be negotiated. The EU has also relied on Ankara for a decade already to help stop the flow of illegal migrants into the bloc across the Aegean. Looking south towards the Middle East, Erdoğan has been a consistent supporter of the rights of the Palestinians, and Turkish diplomacy and economic aid will be an important factor in achieving regional peace and in helping to reconstruct Gaza and Lebanon. Erdoğan is clearly counting on these factors to mute European and American criticism of his crackdown. He certainly seems to have guessed correctly when it comes to the Trump administration. “There’s a lot of good, positive news coming out of Türkiye”, proclaimed Trump’s special envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, reporting to the US media in glowing terms on a recent Trump-Erdoğan phone call on 21 March. He did not mention the protests and the “good news” probably referred to the possibility of Ankara being readmitted into the F35 fighter jet programme. The country was excluded during the Obama administration after Erdoğan concluded an agreement with Moscow for the purchase of Russian S400 air defence batteries, judged by NATO to be an unacceptable security risk if they were hooked up to the alliance’s air defence system. Yet, the financial markets may not share Witkoff’s optimism. Before his latest move against the opposition, Erdoğan was having some success in stabilising the Turkish economy. After pursuing highly irresponsible economic policies, like very low interest rates, to fuel growth, he appointed a more orthodox economic team that managed to repair much of the damage, increasing interest rates to support the lira and bringing inflation down to 39%. Central Bank reserves have also been built up. But now political turmoil will scare investors away and risk undoing much of the good work.

Something similar has been happening in Serbia, also an EU candidate country sinking into authoritarianism and subject to periodic outbursts of popular protest. Here again, we have a regime firmly in place for a long time already at the helm of a party that has largely captured the state. In the case of Serbia, it is Alexander Vučić and his Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), which has ruled the country since 2014. Like Erdoğan, Vučić has based his legitimacy on providing economic prosperity. GDP per capita in Serbia has risen by 90% during Vučić’s term. The exodus of Russian businesses and middle-class professionals to Serbia in the wake of Western sanctions against Putin has also helped to stimulate the economy. Vučić has banged the nationalist drum. His particular minority issue is not the 15 million Kurds who live in Türkiye but rather the 80,000 Kosovar Serbs who live in the north of Kosovo, which, since 2008, has been an independent country, but Belgrade has adamantly refused to recognise the sovereignty of its former province from the time of Yugoslavia. Vučić has constantly agitated against Kosovo, issuing military threats from time to time and maintaining parallel structures in northern Kosovo to make it impossible for Pristina to establish its administrative authority there. In nearby Bosnia and Herzegovina, he has also given backing to the leader of the Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, in his repeated attempts to defy the Bosnian constitution and withdraw cooperation with the country’s state institutions. Last June, Vučić organised a gathering of ethnic Serbs from across the Western Balkans with the same jingoistic rhetoric that we heard from Slobodan Milošević and his acolytes in the 1990s. Vučić has constantly accused the Western allies of hypocrisy as they have defended the territorial integrity of Ukraine while accepting the violent and non-consensual separation of Kosovo (as if the two cases were identical and forgetting the brutal repression of the Kosovo Albanians at the hands of the Serbian army and special police units).

At the same time, Vučić has copied Erdoğan’s practice of swinging between West and East. He has refused to implement the EU sanctions against Russia, despite claiming to seek EU membership, in order to placate his nationalist supporters. Yet, he has turned a blind eye to Serbian arms manufacturers supplying Ukraine and has voted to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the UN General Assembly. Vučić shows up at EU summits with Western Balkan leaders and also meetings in Brussels of the EU-sponsored Belgrade-Pristina Dialogue, even though he says these meetings produce “nothing”. Yet, he has allowed Gazprom to buy up Serbia’s gas infrastructure and Russia and China supply it with weapons and military technology. Occasionally, Serbia conducts exercises with Russia but although, unlike Türkiye, it is not a member of NATO, it has joined the alliance’s Partnership for Peace and under the radar screen conducts even more drills with the US and the Europeans. It has started negotiating the first chapters of EU membership, but Vučić frequently criticises EU member states and their leaders even though they are Serbia’s largest donors and investors. Although Vučić likes to claim that the only chair he sits on is a chair called Serbia, he follows Erdoğan in clearly refusing to take sides and balancing between West and East according to how he calculates his political advantage.

But as the Serbian government has rigged elections, locked up activists, tried to restrict the rights of the LGBTQ+ community and put spyware on the phones of journalists, so popular opposition has grown. Part of this has been motivated by environmental concerns. In 2022, there were huge demonstrations against the government’s plans to award Rio Tinto a license to operate a lithium mine. The government was forced to shelve the project until restarting it last July as it signed a strategic partnership with the EU anxious to use Serbian lithium for batteries for electric vehicles. The protests have since resumed. Other protests last year focused on Serbia’s lax gun control laws following a number of shootings in schools and public places. But the largest and most sustained protests by far have taken place in recent months in reaction to the collapse of a roof at the railway station of Novi Sad, killing 15 people. A sixteenth died of his injuries a few days ago. The roof had been shoddily built by the Chinese, but for thousands of Serbs the tragedy was a further sign of government corruption and indifference to public safety. Vučić has responded to the massive anti-government protests with a panoply of repressive measures similar to those of Erdoğan. He has denounced the protesters as foreign agents. On a visit to Moscow, Aleksandar Vulin, the Deputy Prime Minister, compared the demonstrations to the “colour revolutions” that Putin has claimed the West instigated to topple “legitimate” (i.e. Moscow-friendly) governments in Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Moldova. Vučić has encouraged counter-demonstrations by his supporters, as if trying to goad the protesters into violence that they have wisely eschewed thus far. Many demonstrators have complained that the Serb police has used sonic weapons against them. The police have denied this but acknowledged that they have these sonic devices as part of their equipment. Given the mounting evidence that sonic weapons have indeed been used, unprovoked and on peaceful demonstrators, and the hundreds claiming to have been affected with severe headaches and giddiness, the EU and the Council of Europe have called on the Serbian government to launch an urgent investigation.

Like Erdoğan in Türkiye, Vučić is hoping that the indifference of the Trump administration for human rights and its obsession with business deals will give him a free pass when it comes to repression at home or interference in Kosovo and Bosnia. Similarly, the EU will be too preoccupied with Ukraine or Trump’s tariffs to worry too much about democratic backsliding in Belgrade, and it will be too keen to access Serbia’s lithium to risk offending Vučić and his regime. As EU membership is not on the cards for either Belgrade or Ankara in the foreseeable future, both Erdoğan and Vučić no doubt calculate that they can ride out the storm in Brussels and use economic and geopolitical leverage to limit the criticism from Europe. Relations can be reset at a later date. The relative silence from the major European powers vis-à-vis the crackdown on protesters in Türkiye and Serbia thus far probably comforts them in this assessment. It might have been different if the demonstrators had waved the EU flag, as was the case on the Maidan in Kyiv back in 2014, or more recently in Tbilisi in protest against the stolen elections and the decision of the Georgian Dream government to halt negotiations with Brussels. But EU flags in both Serbia and Türkiye have been conspicuous by their absence. The demonstrators see this as an internal matter where they have to push for change using their own forces, and not hope or expect the EU and the Western democracies more generally to come to their aid. Certainly, it is true that political change and democratisation have to come from the inside, from popular pressure and the pushback of civil society. This was the lesson of 1989 in Europe when communism fell. Outside powers could encourage and help steer the process but not initiate it. Try to keep it peaceful and deter governments from using excessive violence in response were the watchwords at the time. Yet, this doesn’t mean that the EU has to be passive and indifferent or follow the Trump administration’s approach of pure value-free transactionalism. After all, Türkiye is a long-standing NATO ally, and both Türkiye and Serbia are candidates for EU membership. It has to be of concern to Brussels (or to Paris, Berlin, Warsaw or London for that matter) when these two countries, always fragile democracies, not just backslide, but move clearly towards authoritarian regimes. If the EU wants demonstrators to wave the EU flag, it has to show them that it sincerely cares about their predicament and is willing and able to use its leverage to protect their human rights and put real pressure on the regimes to uphold their human rule of law and constitutional freedoms. How can this be done?

First by speaking out and condemning firmly the excessive reaction of the governments to peaceful demonstrations. It is important here that Europe avoids the frequent ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine whereby the EU institutions (such as the Commission, Parliament or High Representative) speak out against the repression while the larger member states stay largely silent and get on with business as usual. It is not a matter of interfering in domestic politics or taking sides for one political party against another. That will only make it easier for the authoritarian regimes to brand the protesters as “foreign agents” manipulated by outside forces. The EU pressure should focus on fundamental human rights, the respect of due process in the judiciary, constitutional norms and respect for the right of peaceful demonstrations. These are norms and obligations that authoritarian regimes have often signed up to themselves, both in domestic law and international treaties and conventions. Where regimes lie or grossly distort the truth the EU and member states should push back vigorously, using whatever information and photographic or digital evidence they have to set the record straight. Authoritarians like to create an information bubble around their populations where, to quote George Orwell’s 1984, “the clock strikes 13”, “war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength”. So, the EU needs to use its communication tools to penetrate the bubble and counter the lies and the propaganda; for instance, exposing police brutality and conducting its own investigations where necessary. The EU has also to keep the media spotlight firmly focused on political prisoners and the conditions of their detention, demanding access by the Red Cross, lawyers and families. Of course, it can always be argued that transparency and public statements by themselves cannot stop repressive regimes from repression. But international attention shows regime opponents that they are not alone and repression always works best when it can be hidden from prying eyes.

A second step is to take targeted measures against the system being used by authoritarian governments to carry out repression. This does not have to be across the board sanctions such as trade bans or financial freezes which would provoke counter-measures and only hurt the European economies at a particularly sensitive time when they are facing the full force of Trump’s “Liberation Day” of higher US tariffs. But the EU could certainly monitor its member states to ensure that they are not providing technology such as spyware or sonic or other non-lethal weapons to Serbia and Türkiye, which could be used to intimidate or corral regime opponents. Police chiefs or judges who clearly are implicated in unlawful or discriminatory actions against innocent protesters (and where evidence to support trumped up charges is clearly lacking) should face asset freezes and travel bans. The EU could downgrade the level of diplomatic contact for routine bilateral meetings while coordinating the daily messaging and activities of its mission and members state embassies in both Ankara and Belgrade. In the case of regime overreaction or violence on a major scale, targeted or temporary sanctions against certain goods or services should be on the agenda. The classic counterargument of realists and Realpolitikers here is that a firm EU pushback will only drive Belgrade and Ankara more closely into the arms of Russia and China, and thus be counterproductive. But these two countries have already been orbiting towards Moscow and Beijing for years and without any EU sanctions or pressure. The problem is that they believe that they can have it both ways, and play one side off against the other and get away with it, suffering from time to time some mild criticism but no real penalty. So, a strategy of exacting a real price in terms of targeted measures and a robust EU information and public diplomacy pushback would at least make their fence-sitting less easy or comfortable for them. If the current softly-softly strategy of strategic patience is not working, then the alternative of step-by-step pressure and a more assertive diplomacy should be given a try.

Finally, this may be the moment to take a fresh look at EU enlargement. The democratic backsliding in Türkiye and Serbia may persuade many EU watchers that this is the time to finally abandon the EU perspective for these two countries and give up any attempt to negotiate seriously with them, putting everything on hold for the time being. But this would be a mistake and play into the regimes’ narrative that Europe is hostile to them, doesn’t want them and that therefore they need to cultivate new allies and partners. The opposition, which certainly will not be helped by Russia or China, will feel abandoned and discouraged. Unlike Georgia, where the Georgian Dream party has frozen negotiations with Brussels for the time being, Ankara and Belgrade still claim to be seriously pursuing EU membership and complain that it is the EU, not themselves, which is not moving the process forward fast enough or with sufficient commitment. So, the EU’s strategy needs to demonstrate that the bloc is making real structural reforms and preparations to enlarge further in the future and that it is pursuing negotiations seriously. But the caveat has to be that the Brussels acquis and the rules will not be modified for geopolitical reasons (i.e. no free lunch), and that the Commission will be scrutinising the compliance of Ankara and Belgrade rigorously before individual accession chapters are approved. There will need to be a probation period before final approval, and EU aid or market access and trade facilitation will be tightly aligned with both technical compliance and respect for democratic norms. A brake can be applied at periodic intervals if compliance is inadequate, and grants, loans and projects suspended. Governments suddenly losing the benefits of progressive European integration in terms of trade, investment or the free movement of people will need to explain to their electorates why they have sacrificed these advantages and for which public good. Certainly, a harder task than when autocrats claim that they alone represent the national interest. It will not be easy for the EU to balance the carrot and the stick in such a finely tuned way. But the EU’s greatest leverage at the moment is to put regimes that claim to want to be part of Europe to the test by putting them through the harsh wringer of meeting EU norms and standards, forcing them to make hard choices and to be more accountable to their civil societies. So, rather than slow the pace of EU enlargement for lack of fully qualified candidates, this is the moment to double down on it as the enlargement process gives the Brussels institutions the best excuse for intervening directly and legitimately in the contested domestic space of the candidate countries. Such a policy would also help to sustain the morale of the hard-pressed civil societies of Belarus and Georgia, which see their countries drawn inexorably into the Russian orbit against the will of the electorate. In the final analysis the regimes may be paying lip service to the European project. But as long as the majority of their populations are not, and want to be anchored in Europe, the EU has a responsibility to engage and provide real incentives and pathways. Not to have simple or perfect solutions is never an excuse for not trying. And action always has at least a partial prospect of success in a way that inaction or resignation never have.

The views expressed in this #CriticalThinking article reflect those of the author(s) and not of Friends of Europe.