Underscoring growing unease, the European Parliament yesterday demanded that the bloc freeze membership negotiations with Turkey over the government’s heavy-handed crackdown following a failed coup in July.
The parliament approved a non-binding resolution by a 479-37 margin with 107 abstentions and said the freeze should last until Ankara’s “disproportionate measures” under the state of emergency are lifted.
Despite the parliamentary vote, EU officials have said that longstanding, but unsuccessful talks should not immediately be halted.
Some EU nations have called for the suspension of the talks, but the bloc is struggling to reach a common stance that would balance EU nations’ need for Ankara’s continued help to stop hundreds of thousands of refugees heading to Europe with their concerns about rights abuses.
“By continuing the illusion of accession talks with an increasingly authoritarian regime, the EU is losing credibility, is fooling our citizens, and also betraying those Turkish citizens who look to Europe as their future,” said Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe group.
Anticipating the vote, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had already said that his country’s “struggle for its stability and future won’t be interrupted by [European legislators] raising and lowering their hands.”
Although the vote carries no immediate consequences, it underscores the increasing unease in Europe over Erdogan’s tightening grip on power in the wake of the coup attempt.
Tens of thousands of people, including teachers, journalists and opposition lawmakers, have been arrested or fired. As reports of more detentions and repression came in, the EU’s stance has steadily hardened.
“We can no longer remain silent in the face of Erdogan’s outrage and the evident breaches of the rule of law and human rights,’’ said Gianni Pittella, leader of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, the second-largest political group in the European Parliament.
Following the vote, Turkish Minister for EU Affairs Omer Celik criticized EU nations for not standing in solidarity with Turkey at a time when it is dealing with a spate of violent attacks.
“Europe is engaged in short-sighted and visionless discussions,” Celik told reporters in the southern Turkish city of Adana, where hours earlier a car bomb attack killed two people and wounded 16 others.
The government does not take the vote seriously, he said.
The European Parliament loses perspective when it comes to Turkey and that it should watch its language when talking about Erdogan, he said.
Even before the yesterday’s vote, Erdogan’s government had suggested that it might pull out of the EU membership process altogether if there was no progress by the end of the year.
Erdogan has also said that he would approve a restoration of the death penalty, which would almost certainly force an end to any talk of Turkey joining the bloc, since a ban on capital punishment is a condition of membership.
Many policymakers and analysts criticized the parliament vote ahead of time, saying it would only push Turkey to harden its position on issues like human rights and the death penalty, while endangering cooperation on limiting refugee flows to Europe.
“It would be a strategic stupidity of the first order for the EU to unilaterally abandon its relationship with Turkey,” former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt said in a Twitter post this week.
Only a few days ago, Erdogan, according to the Hurriyet newspaper, threatened to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a body that includes China and Russia, in place of seeking membership of the EU.
“The EU has been delaying us for 53 years. How can such a thing happen?” the paper quoted the Turkish leader as saying.
“The EU Parliament resorting to such a vote means it takes terror organizations under its wings, it takes sides with them,” he said on Wednesday in a speech in Istanbul to a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
Turkey first expressed interest in joining the union in the 1960s, although formal accession talks began in 2005.
The European Parliament’s vote comes at an awkward time for both the EU and Turkey. Accession talks formally resumed this year in a limited number of areas as part of the deal to limit migration.
That deal, which was reached in March last year, provides for the union and member states to pay Turkey 3 billion euros (US$3.2 billion) for refugee assistance this year and next year, and it foresees a further 3 billion euros in 2018.
In exchange, Turkey agreed to help stop the flow of refugees across its border and to take back refugees rejected for asylum in Europe.
Additional reporting by Reuters
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
RSS