Actually , from 1999 till 2004 , the EU was uncharacteristically receptive and drove the reforms . I did not think TR fulfilled the Copenhagen Criteria , for example , but they effectively said it did as many harmonization packages got passed by the parliament . The AKP got elected at the end of the process and was in power when the last few were passed , and got the formal commitment . AKP understood very well and apparently told the Americans according to the leaked cables that they could not survive in a freer environment with many controls over gov ' t action public procurement laws in particular , probably . They also needed the EU as the elected gov ' t when the permanent parts of the statebureaucracy army , judiciary seemed inclined to bend the law or outright step outside it to take them down . All this could have worked , perhaps , to help transform TR a bit if the EU showed some statesmanship . Instead we got Sarkozy and , to an extent , Merkel publicly babbling stuff against TR accession no doubt due to public sentiment , parts of visible EU intelligentsia getting mouthy against secular forces in TR perhaps under the influence of Gulenists and pushing them towards nationalism and , as the cherry on top , a world financial oddity that came crashing down subsequently which produced an illusion of wealth through access to easy credit which , in turn , enabled the AKP to play the ballot box against the establishment to make headway towards a oneparty regime . This is not entirely the EU ' s fault . In fact I ' d claim if we needed the EU to liberalize we probably were merely wishing to be very lucky rather than putting in a genuine earnest effort . That said , I personally hated the way the EU fundedpraised the section of the Turkish intelligentsia who were Gulen sycophants thereby making the locals ' task as individuals or groups that much harder . Even for very simple , almost trivial stuff . I mean I even saw some people who I won ' t name because they are in trouble now due their Gulen ties who were nonreligious if not atheists themselves , wroting articles in support of criminalizing blasphemy here in Turkey , in Europe and even in the US while getting all kinds of praise from places to the West of here .