I was walking around one of Istanbul's chicest neighborhoods last year when I met a woman sipping coffee across the street from a Louis Vuitton store.
You couldn't find a more European Turk in Istanbul if you tried — and yet she, like the vast majority of people in this country, was fed up with the European Union and our seemingly endless negotiations to join it. Perhaps a little overly confident in Turkey's economic prosperity, she felt we should turn away from Europe.
Fast-forward a year, and much has changed for many Turks. Call it Arab Spring fatigue. After eight years of frustration with the EU, a growing number of Turks are once again warming up to the idea of embracing Europe.
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The most recent evidence: A September survey by the German Marshall Fund of the United States shows that, for the first time since 2006, a majority of Turks think EU membership would be good for the country.
According to the survey, 53 percent of Turkish respondents say EU membership would be a good thing, an 8 percent increase from 2013. Turks are also more positive about NATO, with 49 percent saying it remains essential to their security — a 10 percent increase from 2013 and the highest level of support since 2005.
The survey doesn't specify exactly who changed their mind, but the data indicates that the shift comes from those who tend to disagree with the foreign policy of Turkey's current Islamist government. Over the past four years, Ankara has shifted away from Europe and the U.S. and more closely aligned itself with Russia and China.
"Turkey was looking for alternatives in the East as a partner instead of the EU," says Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, the Ankara office director for the German Marshall Fund. "Turks were tired of hearing that they were not Europeans and not wanted within the EU."
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Today, however, Europe has finally toned down its negative rhetoric about Turkey, perhaps because it has been dealing with more pressing matters, namely the continent's sputtering economy. Meanwhile, many Turks are frustrated with the spillover effects of the Syrian civil war, which has sent 1.5 million refugees across the border and helped create a serious jihadi threat from the Islamic State, a radical group better known as ISIS. In October, 30 people died in anti-ISIS protests across Turkey, as Kurdish demonstrators and Islamist groups clashed in the street.
But it's not just foreign policy that may be causing more Turks to look West once again. Analysts say the growing power of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a moderate Islamist, has also shifted the debate. "Checks and balances are weak," says Sinan Ulgen, a visiting scholar at the European Center for Carnegie Endowment, a Brussels-based think tank. "Turkey's secular opposition groups started to understand the advantages of being part of Europe."
Erdogan's supporters, meanwhile, continue to bash the EU, claiming Turkey could do better on its own. Recently, a pro-government Islamist writer ridiculed a European university exchange program called Erasmus, calling it "Orgasmus" and describing it as a sex project because students sometimes settle down together. This sparked a larger debate across the country about whether Turkish and European values are compatible.
Going forward, the question remains: Can Turkey's embattled opposition muster the necessary support to push through an agreement with Europe? For all its anti-European rhetoric, some say there's still a chance. As Joost Lagendijk, a former member of the European Parliament who now teaches at Kultur University in Istanbul, puts it: "For economic reasons, Turkey has to stick with the EU."
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