EU
in damage control on festering Turkey relations
By NIKOLAJ NIELSEN
BRUSSELS, 25. NOV,
17:20
The EU wants to hold
on to ties with Turkey, amid threats by Ankara to scupper a migrant
deal, in the wake of an EU parliament vote to freeze accession talks.
The European
Commission on Friday (25 November) told reporters that diplomatic
ties will be maintained with Ankara, despite MEPs pushing to
temporarily suspend Turkey's fraught accession path towards EU
membership.
"We are
sticking to the EU-Turkey agreement on refugees and we will do
everything we can to make it succeed," said chief commission
spokesman, Margaritas Schinas.
The March deal, with
provisions to swap migrants, has reduced numbers of people crossing
the Aegean to reach the Greek islands compared to last year.
But, the European
Parliament earlier in the week voted overwhelmingly to freeze
negotiations in response to a widespread Turkish government-led
crackdown on alleged terrorists and state-saboteurs linked to the
failed mid-July military coup.
The move is
non-binding but sends a political message that the ever widening gap
between Ankara and Brussels appears increasingly difficult to bridge.
The MEP vote has
triggered a harsh rebuke from Turkey's president Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, who once again has threatened in response to renege on the
March deal.
"If you go any
further, these border gates will be opened. Neither me nor my people
will be affected by these dry threats. It wouldn't matter if all of
you approved the vote," he said at a women's congress in
Istanbul.
Omer Celik, Turkey's
Europe minister, also issued a seven-page missive that described the
parliament's vote as "narrow-minded and irrational."
Celik said it made
no sense to freeze talks given that EU membership negotiations have
already stalled.
He also shot back
over what he described as the upsurge of "extreme right
policies" and xenophobia throughout the EU states.
Celik is travelling
to Brussels next week where he will meet with commission
vice-president Frans Timmermans, migration commissioner Dimitris
Avramopoulos, and security commissioner Julian King.
The EU council,
representing member states, has the final say on whether or not to
freeze talks.
The vast majority of
EU states, Austria aside, want to keep relations and are likely to
disregard the MEP vote given the broader fears over a 2015 repeat
when some 1 million people arrived to claim asylum.
Timmermans, in
minutes of a commissioners college earlier this month, said severing
ties with Turkey "would be a grave political error."
He warned against
any action that could provide the Turkish authorities "with a
pretext in the current circumstances".
Cyprus, an island
divided
Implications of an
official freeze on talks may also factor into other key policy areas
like the reunification talks in Cyprus.
Turk and Greek
Cypriot negotiators are hoping to reach a deal before the end of the
year to unify the island divided since 1974.
The Republic of
Cyprus has been a member of the EU since 2004, but the outstanding
issues over Turkey's hold in the northern area of the island have for
decades, with some 40,000 Turkish troops on the island.
"It is, of
course, obvious that a solution to the Cyprus partition problem will
have beneficial spillover effects across the European Union and
beyond," said Schinas.
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