The European Union begins talks today with Turkey that are as fraught as they are crucial. European leaders are desperately hoping that Turkey will do more to halt the flow of migrants and refugees into Greece and will take back many of those now stranded on Greek islands or in front of razor-wire frontiers in the Balkans. The EU has agreed to pay Ankara some €3 billion to stop the appalling trade in smuggling migrants, but has so far seen nothing in return. Turkey is quibbling about conditions and demanding more cash for its efforts while also holding up EU plans to patrol the Greek coastline with military vessels.
Holding a weak hand, and fearful of antago- nising a key strategic Nato partner, the Europeans are therefore playing down recent appalling behaviour by the Turkish government, which in more normal times deserves swift and forthright condemnation. On Friday the police, with no warning or legal justification, raided the main opposition newspaper, arrested its editor and senior columnist and roughed up those protesting outside against this blatant violation of press freedom.
A few days earlier, President Erdogan, acting way beyond the limited powers currently given to the head of state, contemptuously dismissed the ruling of the constitutional court that two journalists who reported on Turkish smuggling of weapons to Islamic State militants had been illegally arrested. He said that he would “not abide” by a ruling for which he had “no respect”, and threatened to have the men rearrested and charged as spies.
Both actions are symptomatic of Mr Erdogan’s growing intolerance of criticism, his determination to silence opposition views and his increasingly authoritarian behaviour. Both are incompatible with the democratic values of the European Union, which Turkey is still officially — though increasingly half-heartedly — seeking to join. So far, the Brussels bureaucracy has said little . It has been left to Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, to raise doubts in public on whether Turkey should eventually become a member of the EU.
Europe has indeed been increasingly concerned by Mr Erdogan’s high-handed and unpredictable actions. His response to any criticism has been to intimidate his opponents, dismiss officials from their jobs and use the apparatus of state to stifle any questioning of his decisions. Accusations of corruption against his cronies and involving his own son were met with a vengeful fury that cost police investigators and prosecutors their jobs, and led him to attempt to close down social media altogether. Anyone known to be supporting the views of Fethullah Gulen, a former Islamist ally and now a fierce critic living in exile in America, can expect to lose his job or face accusations of terrorism and subversion. This, indeed, was what cost the opposition newspaper Zaman its freedom — an action made all the more ludicrously partisan by its reappearance on Sunday as a fawning admirer of the president’s actions.
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It is not only Europe that is finding Turkey a maverick ally. Washington has been frustrated by Mr Erdogan’s policies in the Middle East, his half-hearted efforts against Isis compared with his renewed attacks on the Kurds and his no-win confrontation with Moscow. Political ambition and frustration at being thwarted in his determination to give himself extra powers as an executive president explain many of these actions, especially the renewal of the war against the PKK Kurdish separatists before the last round of elections. There is more than a touch of Putinesque megalomania about Mr Erdogan nowadays.
Turkey is too important as an ally in a volatile part of the world to cold-shoulder. But the need to engage Ankara in stabilising the region should not silence the West in speaking out on its president’s increasingly egregious and capricious behaviour.