Special relations. In the European Commission's latest reports on current and planned accession negotiations, Turkey is a special case. Its desire to join the EU has been recognised for many years and formal negotiations have been under way since 2005. It has sometimes been asked how European Turkey is, however, with most of its surface area lying in Asia. Negotiations have been languishing (barely 8 of the 35 chapters to be negotiated have been opened) and some member states, such as...