Turkey and the EU still miles apart on membership

Turkey ‘clearly is and stays a candidate country,’ says Mogherini, but talks with senior ministers were tense.

The strained relationship between the EU and Turkey “makes it difficult in this moment to imagine the opening of further chapters” in its bid to become a member of the bloc, Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said Tuesday.

Speaking at a two-hour long joint press conference with senior members of the Turkish government, Mogherini said Turkey “clearly is and stays a candidate country” but was clear that no further progress was likely unless Ankara changed its ways.

Along with Commissioner for Enlargement Johannes Hahn, Mogherini held talks in Brussels with Turkey’s Foreign Affairs Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and EU Affairs Minister Ömer Çelik on a wide range of issues including Turkey’s membership bid as well as energy, antiterrorism, migration, trade and foreign policy.

However, the Turkish government’s crackdown on the opposition since a failed coup just over a year ago loomed large.

Hahn expressed “very strong concern” about the imprisonment of “a large number of journalists, writers, academics, lawyers and human rights defenders … We expect due legal procedure in respect of the presumption of innocence.”

“It is not only the Cyprus issue that makes it difficult in the moment to imagine the opening of further chapters,” Mogherini said.

The Turkish ministers had their own demands and called for more commitment from the EU, including on the opening of several “chapters” in the membership talks.

Çelik said Turkey was still a candidate country and called on the EU to open up two more membership chapters. “We must open these two chapters,” he said.

Çavuşoğlu spoke of a “different mindset on certain issues” and gave reasons for Turkey’s arrests of journalists and NGO staff.

“We should see real journalists as apart from pseudo journalists, who help terrorist activities and terrorists,” he told reporters. “Just because you carry out a journalistic activity doesn’t mean you will not carry out a criminal offense.”

The recent tensions have resulted in little progress being made on negotiations toward Turkey’s membership of the EU, which started in 2005.

In addition, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s recent call to bring back the death penalty prompted members of the European Parliament to call for a complete suspension of membership talks.

Relations are particularly bad with Germany, and Erdoğan was recently banned from giving a speech to supporters at the G20 in Hamburg. German officials also expressed frustration after Turkish officials arrested Peter Steudtner, a human rights activist from Berlin who is accused of supporting a terrorist organization.

Asked about Erdogan’s criticism of Germany, Çavuşoğlu said: “Just because you have a problem with a given country doesn’t necessarily mean you are against Europe or you are criticizing a European country.”

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