IKV organised a seminar entitled “Turkey and the EU: Common Interests or Divergent Paths?” with the cooperation of the Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance (ACELG) in Amsterdam on 30 May 2016.

The seminar was realised within the framework of IKV’s project on EU Presidencies, which aims to contribute to the Turkey-EU accession negotiations process by raising awareness and providing more information on Turkey-EU relations in countries that have taken over the EU presidency.

Relations between Turkey and the EU have been re-energised recently over the refugee deal. The seminar hosting experts on Turley-EU relations from academia and civil society aimed to contribute to debates about the current state of Turkey’s EU perspective with an emphasis on the accession process and the association regime as well as on the ongoing areas of cooperation between both parties i.e. the updating of the Customs Union, the agreement on the refugee action plan and the visa liberalisation process.

The seminar started with the opening speeches of Prof. Tom Eijsbouts from the University of Amsterdam and IKV Chairman Ayhan Zeytinoğlu. While Prof. Eijsbouts expressed his gratitude to IKV for the organisation of this timely seminar, IKV Chairman Zeytinoğlu provided information about IKV’s activities and its projects. During his opening speech, IKV Chairman Zeytinoğlu also mentioned about IKV’s recent survey, which indicated that the support for EU membership has increased to 75.5 percent in 2016 owing to the re-energised relations among both parties.

The first session started with the moderation of IKV Vice-Chairman and Dean of Yeditepe University Faculty of Law Prof. Halûk Kabaalioğlu and presentations of Prof. Vilenas Vadapalas, Former Judge at the European Court of Justice, Assoc. Prof. Katalin Cseres from ACELG, and Assoc. Prof. Sait Akman from TEPAV’s Centre for Multilateral Trade Studies. In his presentation, Prof. Vadapalas tackled the revision of the Customs Union from a legal perspective and Assoc. Prof. Cseres from the angle of the competition law. Assoc. Prof. Akman focused on the issues related to the deepening of the integration of Turkey in the EU. In this respect, he underlined the importance of the updating of the Customs Union so as to enable Turkey to overcome the challenges of the EU’s dynamic related to trade policy.

In the second session, Assoc. Prof. Thomas Vandamme and Assoc. Prof. Ronald van Ooik from ACELG and Prof. Sanem Baykal from the University of Ankara discussed the pending issues in Turkey-EU relations. In her presentation, Prof. Baykal mentioned that the visa liberalisation process enabled Turkey to pass long waited laws.

The last session of the seminar, IKV Secretary-General and Vice-Chair of the department of Political Science and International Relations at Yıldız Technical University Assoc. Prof. Çiğdem Nas and Senior Advisor of European Foundation for Democracy Dr. Demir Murat Seyrek discussed about the recent developments related to the Turkey-EU Action Plan.