EP vice president: Turkey has moved away from EU
May 11, 2014, SEYİT ARSLAN/ VIENNA – Zaman – Turkey’s bid to join the European Union has been undermined in recent months and Turkey has moved away from the 28-nation bloc, according to Othmar Karas, an Austrian politician and member of the European Parliament’s biggest group, the European People’s Party (EPP).
In an interview with Today’s Zaman, Karas insisted that the EU is not just a common market and that membership in the bloc requires a commitment to values such as freedom of religion and democracy, and respect for human dignity. “I hope Turkey will reinstate the dynamism of reform on the way to becoming an EU member,” he said in the interview, which was conducted in German.
Karas, who is running for re-election to the European Parliament in the elections slated for the end of this month, said he and another Austrian Member of the European Parliament (MEP), Hannes Swoboda of the Social Democratic Party, supported the opening of accession talks between the EU and Turkey. “But I have to say with regret that developments over the past several months have pushed Turkey away from the EU,” he said, adding, “I regret this because I believe that the EU and Turkey moving closer to each other is in the interest of both sides.”
Turkey opened accession negotiations with the EU in 2005 following a series of political reforms carried out during the early years of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AK Party) rule. But the process has since lost its momentum amid the reluctance of some EU countries to let Turkey in and due to the failure to resolve the Cyprus problem. Since the second half of last year, however, relations took a nosedive amid EU criticism of the Turkish government’s response to last summer’s Gezi protests and to a major corruption investigation that erupted with a wave of detentions on Dec. 17. In the wake of the detentions the government reassigned thousands of police officers and dozens of judges and prosecutors, including those involved in the graft probe, in what appears to be an attempt to stifle further investigation of the corruption claims.
Karas, known at home for his uncompromising stance against corruption, insisted that those who break the law must be ready to face its consequences. “Whoever breaks laws doesn’t tell the truth and abuses moral values … they harm the society they live in,” he said. According to the Austrian politician, the EU does not have the capacity to absorb the membership of a country like Turkey, and Turkey has not met the conditions of membership. But the membership negotiations must be continued on the basis of agreements signed and European values,” he said. http://www.todayszaman.com/news-347502-ep-vice-president-turkey-has-moved-away-from-eu.html