Reading the new government program at the general assembly meeting in the parliament Sept. 1, Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s new prime minister, said the European Union membership process remains a strategic value for the country. He even announced that the target was “to crown the Republic’s centennial by EU membership.” Yet he also weighed in on building a “New Turkey” as a strategic mission through a “restoration,” saying that this has already been going on since the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power over a decade ago.
Davutoglu’s desire for strategic accomplishments sends out a potentially contradictory message. “Few people really understand what the prime minister means by ‘restoration’ except that it signals a change in the current system,” Nilgun Arisan Eralp, an EU expert at the Ankara-based think tank TEPAV, told Al-Monitor. “The EU accession process already puts a program before Turkey, and if the EU membership is really a strategic target for the country, there really is no need to talk about a separate restoration process. It only confuses the mind.”