EU executive says Turkish actions rule out membership. Turkey says ending EU accession undermines Europe
The actions of the Turkish authorities are making it “impossible” for the country to join the European Union, the EU executive said on Monday after German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for ending accession talks.
UPDATE: Turkey’s European Union Affairs Minister Omer Celik said on Monday that any talk of ending his country’s negotiations for EU accession amounted to an “attack on Europe’s founding principles”.
His comments came a day after German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it was clear that Turkey should not join the EU and that she would talk to other EU leaders about ending its stalled accession process.
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Merkel’s main challenger in Germany’s Sept. 24 national election, Martin Schulz, has also promised to push for an end to Turkey’s EU negotiations if elected chancellor.
“They are building a Berlin wall with bricks of populism,” Celik tweeted. Turkey will “keep going with its head held high as a European country and a European democracy,” he said.
Quoting European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker from last week, before Merkel’s election campaign comment, the Commission’s chief spokesman told a regular news briefing: “Turkey is taking giant strides away from Europe and that is making it impossible for Turkey to join the European Union.”
He stressed, however, that any decision on whether to formally halt the long-stalled membership process would be up to the 28 member states of the bloc, not the Brussels executive.
Turkey is not ready to join the European Union now, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman said on Monday after she said during a German election debate on Sunday that Ankara “should not become a member”.
Merkel was bounced into beefing up her rhetoric on Turkey during the debate after her main challenger, Social Democrat Martin Schulz, vowed to stop Ankara’s bid to join the EU if he was elected chancellor.
“The chancellor’s words speak for themselves,” Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, told a regular government news conference in Berlin.
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“At the moment, Turkey is not at all in a position to join the European Union. In fact, the negotiations are dormant at the moment,” he said, adding that EU leaders would pick up the issue when they meet in October.
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