President Erdoğan met Belgian Queen Mathilde in Istanbul on Monday. He called updating the EU-Türkiye Customs Union "a key area necessitating swift progress" and said Türkiye's participation in EU defence initiatives is "in the mutual interest of all sides."

Perhaps such an unexpected, open statement from the Turkish leader raises curiosity about why, in such a different context, he is emphasizing the enhancement of relations. In this paper, we will explore what this means and why it is happening now.

From its economic perspectives, the answer to this is quite easy to tell. The Customs Union came into effect from 1 January 1996. This agreement permits most industrial products to flow freely between Türkiye and the EU, which today is Türkiye's largest trading partner, with two-way goods trade soaring to a record €210 billion in 2024, making Türkiye the EU's fifth-largest trading partner. On paper, it appears to be a successful story, except for one flaw – the document was devised in the 1990s.

The core grievance on the Turkish side is structural asymmetry. While the Customs Union has provisions for industrial goods, it makes no provision whatsoever for services, agriculture, or public procurement, which are all fields in which there is great potential for commercial transactions, but which are all fields where Türkiye is denied preferential access that it would be entitled to under membership within the European Union or at least a state-of-the-art Free Trade Agreement. Moreover, since Türkiye uses the EU common external tariff in transactions with third parties, each time the EU signs an FTA – such as the one signed with India in January 2026 or the ones with Mercosur or Singapore – the exports of the latter get preferential access into Türkiye through the European Union.

To put it into perspective, for........

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