By Barçın Yinanç
Trade Minister Ömer Bolat has taken ownership for managing the EU’s “Made in Europe” initiative, which threatens Turkey with being shut out from the bloc’s new rules on supply chains and public procurement schemes.
“After Ankara, Brussels is the city I visit the most,” he joked, adding he came to the Belgian capital five times already this year.
Addressing the Turkey-EU business summit held this week in the European capital, he said he had been there two weeks earlier to meet Stephane Sejourne, the executive vice president of the European Commission for prosperity and industrial strategy, who champions the Industrial Acceleration Act (IAA). His talks with Sejourne, who is openly gay, took place nearly two weeks after Turkish authorities carried out a large-scale, coordinated wave of police raids and arrests targeting LGBTQ+ activists.
Turkish officials have an excellent sense of timing when it comes to lobbying efforts in the EU.
This time, however, the police raid of the headquarters of the pro-opposition news channel, Halk TV, missed overshadowing the business community’s campaign by a day.
RECALLING EU’S COMMITMENTS
While the erosion of the rule of law is seen as one of the key problems behind the deterioration in Turkish-EU relations, ironically nowadays it is the Turkish officials who remind their counterparts of the importance of remaining committed to the rules.
Ambassador Yaprak Balkan, the Turkish permanent delegate to the EU, said trade barriers should not apply to industrial goods, according to the EU–Turkey Customs Union Decision No. 1/95, and, if not amended, the IAA will undermine that decision.
“We are asking our European counterparts to remain loyal to their commitments,” she said, addressing the business summit, organized by the Foreign Economic Relations Council (DEİK).
BEING A BACK DOOR IS AN ‘URBAN LEGEND’
As the EU fails to increase its exports to China, the strategy has now shifted to making China sell less to the EU in order to address the trade imbalance. While the protectionist measures within the Commission’s proposal mainly target China, they also risk undermining trade with countries such as Turkey. Due to its customs union, Turkey is suspected of being a back door for third countries' goods. “This is an urban legend,” said Ambassador Balkan.
Representatives of the Turkish business community believe Turkey is being unfairly seen as a trojan horse by Europe. They point to the fact that Europe’s economy is 15 times bigger than the Turkish economy, but Chinese investments to Europe are 38 times bigger than Chinese investment in Turkey.
Throughout the meeting, Turkish participants shared numbers showing how integration has been a win-win for both sides. Bilateral trade rose from $26 billion in 1995 to $233 billion in 2025, when the EU ran a surplus of almost $12 billion.
In 2025, Turkey produced 1.4 million vehicles. European manufacturers account for more than 70% of vehicle production in Turkey, according to Levent Çakıroğlu, the CEO of Koç Holding.
“EU vehicle exports to Turkey rose by a quarter last year to €18.8 billion, and almost half of all new cars sold in Turkey were made in the EU. In 2025, Turkey imported more than 800,000 vehicles from the EU. By value, it was the EU’s third-largest vehicle export market, after the United Kingdom and the United States,” said Çakıroğlu.
“Turkey creates employment in European countries,” said Ambassador Balkan.
“These figures show how much both sides have at stake in preserving this shared production base and access to each other’s markets,” said Çakıroğlu and after recalling recent trade agreements made with third countries in the course of the past year, asked:
“You are looking for new partners, but what kind of a message will you give to them when you are about to undermine a successful cooperation?”
ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
“Competition today is no longer only about price or scale; it is increasingly about trust,” said Nail Olpak, the head of DEİK.
But how do you measure trust? By looking to leadership?
The elephant in the room is “President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,” a former Turkish official told me.
But the business community is trying to convince its counterparts to measure trust based on economic performance.
“Trust is not built through words, but performance. For more than 30 years, Turkey has proven itself a reliable producer and a trusted dependable partner for Europe, through every crisis. That is our shared capital,” Olpak told the audience in the Egmont Palace.
Put simply, while politics has stalled, business has kept the relationship moving. Sustaining this cooperation requires continued confidence in the framework that made it possible, according to a Turkish businessperson.
BILATERAL TRADE ON PUBLIC PROCUREMENT REMAINS CRITICAL
Officials from the European Commission believe a bilateral agreement between Turkey and the EU will strengthen Turkey’s hand. Currently, the latest amendment made during the summer to the public procurement law that gives the authority to open public bids to European companies falls short of fulfilling the reciprocity principle.
Giving the initiative to the president opens it to discretionary implementation, according to Commission officials. In addition, in the absence of an agreement, there is no guarantee the EU will keep the doors open to Turkish companies. The Commission’s proposal risks excluding Turkish companies from public procurement, especially in the automotive sector.
Currently, the bill is in the European Parliament and already has received 5,900 proposals for amendment, which can result in indefinite delays or a compromise that waters down the bill beyond recognition.
