EU must see Turkiye as candidate country engaged in membership negotiations, says FM

Recent resolutions by the EU General Affairs Council that contains parts on Turkiye shows the narrow-mindedness and prejudice of the bloc, Ankara said on Wednesday.

“The section on our country in the resolutions adopted by the European Union (EU) at the General Affairs Council once again reveals the narrow-minded and prejudiced view of the EU towards Turkiye,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement a day after the EU Council released the conclusions on enlargement, stabilisation and association.

Asserting that the resolutions mentioning Turkiye subordinated EU interests in favour of those of specific member states, the ministry said that they contributed nothing to ties between Ankara and Brussels or to generating a “positive agenda.”

“Unfortunately, with this strategy, the EU has demonstrated yet again that it is incapable of correctly reading the change in the international system,” it said, categorically rejecting the bloc’s “illegitimate allegations against our country regarding democracy, the rule of law, and human rights.”

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Turkiye also does not accept the “unfortunate” resolutions on the Eastern Mediterranean and Cyprus issues, it said, stressing that the EU’s remarks on these matters could be seen as nothing more than “speakership” for Greece and the Greek Cypriot administration.

The statement also emphasised that the decision ignored Ankara’s continued diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine and its strong support for that country’s territorial integrity.

“We are astonished that our country’s response to the matter (Russia-Ukraine war) has been reduced solely to its nonparticipation in EU sanctions and that Turkiye’s principled stance of not engaging in unilateral sanctions was characterised as deliberately rendering the sanctions ineffective.”

Turkiye’s trade and economic relations with Russia do not undermine the sanctions and it is also critical that dialogue with Moscow continues is also important in order to minimize the negative effects of the war, it said, pointing to the examples of the Black Sea Grain Corridor and prisoner exchange between the two sides.

The statement also noted that for Ankara to take such decisions seriously, the EU must regard Turkiye as a candidate country engaged in membership negotiations and demonstrate the needed political will.

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