Theresa May will undertake one of the toughest diplomatic tasks of her premiership when she visits Turkey later this month to try to assuage anger at Ankara’s treatment by the European Union and the Obama administration.
The British prime minister will also have to respond to claims that her cabinet colleagues used the unlikely threat of imminent Turkish membership of the EU to whip up a leave vote in the Brexit referendum.
Boris Johnson, now the foreign secretary, was one of the leading voices in the leave campaign who claimed Turkey was on the brink of joining the EU and was set to be given permission for mass visa-free travel into the EU. He also wrote a satirical limerick describing President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as a “wankerer” who had sex with a goat.
Johnson has since visited Ankara to repair the damage and assert that the UK supports Turkish membership of the EU – the longstanding Foreign Office position.
Ankara deeply resents what it views as the EU’s collective failure to deliver in full on promises made last March of visa-free travel and cash to compensate Turkey for the burden of looking after millions of Syrian refugees.
The EU has been increasingly alarmed at the authoritarian trend in Turkish politics, especially since the attempted coup in July last year. Turkey has defended mass arrests and a crackdown on free speech by arguing that it is locked in a twin war against Kurdish separatists and Islamic State fighters.
This week, the foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, accused the EU of wasting Turkey’s time and reminded Brussels to meet the obligations of the March refugee deal. A payment of €3bn due before the end of 2016 was still to be finalised, he said.
May, who will probably arrive in Ankara on 17 January, will distance the UK from the hold-up in the flow of EU cash to Turkey.
Turkey’s trading relationship with the EU has been held up as a possible future model for the UK. Since 1996, Turkey has been a member of the EU customs union for some goods but not for others.
Overall, Turkey’s relations with the UK are better than with many other EU countries, partly because the UK responded quickly to the coup attempt. The Europe minister, Alan Duncan, was dispatched to Ankara on 22 July, becoming the first EU minister to express solidarity with the Turkish government by visiting the capital.
To keep those relations on an even keel, May will need to tread a careful path over the UK’s approach to the Syrian Kurdish forces of the Democratic Union party (PYD), the force at the forefront of the US-led battle to drive Islamic State from Raqqa, the Isis headquarters in north-east Syria.
Turkey regards the PYD as an extension of the PKK terrorist organisation that is fighting for greater independence in Turkey. Ankara hopes that Donald Trump will join Turkey’s new alliance with Vladimir Putin and reject working with the PYD.
May, who is likely to arrive days before Trump is inaugurated, will have to acknowledge Turkish concerns about the PYD without setting out a new approach to Syria before the US or the EU has formulated any such policy.
The UK’s public position remains that President Bashar al-Assad must leave office as part of a political transition, but that may not emerge as the stance of the Trump administration.
May’s visit will also come as talks on a possible reunification of Cyprus reach a critical stage. The two sides of the island are due to hold a peace conference in Geneva next week, with Turkey, Greece and the UK acting as security guarantors. The aim is to hold a referendum later this year, which will require agreement on the gradual withdrawal of up to 30,000 Turkish troops from the north of the island.
