Publication

This commentary looks at the poor state of EU-Turkey relations, which have been aggravated by the migrant crisis in 2015 and the Turkish government's wide-ranging crackdown after the failed July 2016 military coup. The text’s author contends that in order to repair the damage that’s been done, the EU should 1) take advantage of the pro-democracy consensus that seems to exist in Turkey today, and 2) practice the ‘principled pragmatism’ that’s articulated in its own Global Strategy. In the Turkish case, principled pragmatism means acknowledging that exceptional measures were required to safeguard the country’s democratic institutions against violent change, but the measures must remain proportional and comply with the rule of law.