Turkey's Relationship With The EU Has Reached A Watershed

On Monday, Turkish expats started voting in Turkey's April 16 constitutional referendum for a transition to a presidential system. Results are set to be tight for the "no" supporters and those who blindly follow Erdoğan.

Whatever the result, Turkey's leaders will have to revise their links with the EU.

Marc Pierini's analysis for Carnegie Europe outlines the political and institutional consequences of this breach. According to Pierini, whatever the outcome, democrats will suffer.

However, Turkey is a diverse society that won't go along easily with a radical transformation. Can Dundar, a Turkish journalist forced to seek political asylum in Germany, remembers the anti-establishment protest in Gezi Park in 2013:

"They may be intimidated, they may be quiet, but those people who stood against Erdoğan are still there."

Pierini argues in this piece that four trends have emerged since the coup attempt last July:

• Turkey's economic successes are being impaired, and the public is increasingly feeling the domestic consequences. The Turkish lira has weakened: a year ago the exchange rate was around €3.2, now it's always close to €4.
• Turkey's foreign policy risks making the country "a pawn on Russia's continental chessboard".
• Turkey is perceived in the West as on the road to autocracy, bullying the EU for domestic political purposes. Many consider the last diplomatic spat a strategy for winning votes.
• The April referendum is not only about a presidential system, but about a societal transformation incompatible with EU standards.

These developments leave the EU with a decision to make on the substance of future relations with Turkey. No diplomacy can smooth Ankara's words comparing Germany with the Nazis and accusing the Netherlands of the Srebrenica massacre.

There are two possible outcomes:

• Negotiations will remain in limbo.
• Turkey will sever its political ties with the EU by reinstating the death penalty or by calling on a referendum on EU accession.