Alwaght- Turkey is “seriously tired” of waiting for the European Union to decide whether to accept the country as a member of the bloc, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday.
The Turkish leader made the comments during a joint press conference with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, making it plain that Ankara would not wait forever.
“One cannot permanently implore and wait to be finally included,” Erdogan said, warning that frustration might tempt Turkey to turn its back on Europe.
The country, a small portion of which rests on the Balkan Peninsula in Southeast Europe, took its early efforts to join Europe in the early 1960s and applied for EU membership in 1987. However, the official negotiations of accession to the union began in 2005. The 12-year-long accession talks were effectively halted after Turkey began a massive crackdown on suspects allegedly involved in a July 2016 failed coup against Erdogan.
The EU reacted strongly to Ankara’s purging of thousands of people from state organizations and institutions over alleged links to the botched putsch, putting Ankara on a bumpier road.
Furthermore, the EU heavyweight member Germany and some other European countries have been involved in diplomatic brawls with Turkey on several issues, including the country's human rights record, in recent months.
To obtain membership, Turkey has to effectively conclude negotiations on 35 policy chapters that involve reforms and the adoption of European standards. The EU has opened 16 out of the required 35 chapters, but only one of them has so far been concluded.
“Unfortunately, we did the first steps in 1963. And it’s now been 54 years that Turkey has been waiting in the antechamber of the EU,” Erdogan further said.
President Macron, for his part, said there was no chance of Turkey's membership bid moving forward. “I'd be lying if I said we could open new chapters,” he said in reference to the accession process.
The French leader further suggested that Ankara should renounce its ambition to join the EU, adding that the bloc needs to "rethink" the accession process and focus on a possible "partnership” or "cooperation" with Turkey.
He also noted that the main goal must be to keep Turkey — a NATO member — “anchored” in Europe and its “future... built looking toward Europe and with Europe.”
On Thursday, Erdogan’s spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin said that Ankara regards the EU membership as a “strategic aim.” He acknowledged, however, that “not much progress has been made in this regard due to several reasons.”
Erdogan’s trip was his first to France since the 2016 attempted putsch.
