Also on Friday, the Commission will unveil a study on “advancing a cross-regional connectivity agenda” with Turkey, Central Europe and the South Caucasus. The study, seen by POLITICO, maps out how investment is needed to strengthen transport, trade, energy and digital connections along the Trans-Caspian Corridor, which links China, Central Asia, the South Caucasus and the Black Sea.
These are symbolic first steps toward bringing Ankara back into the fold, but they’re not what Turkey really wants from the EU — that would be an updated customs union agreement. The old deal was signed in 1995.
New trade agreements signed by Brussels with India and the Mercosur group of South American countries put Turkey at a competitive disadvantage. Once they’re in place, Ankara will be forced to grant tariff-free access to goods from those countries, but that benefit won’t be reciprocated.
Even Ekrem İmamoğlu, the democratically elected mayor of Istanbul, whose arrest last March triggered massive nationwide protests and international condemnation, weighed in in favor of upgrading the customs union deal.
In a plea sent from his prison cell to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council chief António Costa and Parliament President Roberta Metsola, İmamoğlu asked the EU to modernize the customs agreement with Turkey.
“The Customs Union remains the only rules-based and normative framework underpinning Türkiye–EU relations,” İmamoğlu said in a social media post Thursday. “In the wake of EU free trade agreements with Mercosur and India, the asymmetrical consequences for Türkiye have become increasingly visible.”