Tag: Turkey

EXCLUSIVE / The European Union has never sent Turkey the required benchmarks to reform its justice system, making the country's EU accession process impossible to complete, according to a high-level official in Ankara who spoke to EurActiv in an exclusive interview.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said today (4 February) that his country’s half-century wait to become part of the European Union was “unforgivable” and it should be admitted without delay.

Cyprus licenced Italy's ENI and South Korea's Kogas for offshore gas exploration yesterday (24 January), in a boon to an economy in line for an international bailout because of its exposure to debt-crippled Greece.

Cyprus' economic adjustment programme and banking sector reforms should be seen as a catalyst that will reinforce macroeconomic and financial stability in the country. Over the longer term, the exploitation of natural gas discoveries should substantially boost growth prospects and help lower debt, writes Stavros Papagianneas.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Turkey should consider bringing back the death penalty, a decade after Ankara abolished capital punishment as part of reforms aimed at EU membership.

The European Union will lose Turkey if it doesn't grant it membership by 2023, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Tuesday (30 October).

In its yearly status report on the progress EU hopefuls are making towards membership, the European Commission has good news for Albania, Macedonia and Kosovo. The report - published today (10 October) - also calls for a resumption of negotiations with EU candidate Turkey that are stalled because of the long-running territorial dispute with Cyprus.

Cyprus will not accept a bailout from international lenders if it involves privatisations and social welfare cuts, President Demetris Christofias said yesterday (3 October), with the indebted government that holds the rotating EU presidency set to propose alternative savings.

Macedonia has accused Greece of dumping illegal migrants on its territory, the Macedonian daily Dnevnik reported, citing unnamed diplomatic sources. 

Athens has cracked down on illegal immigrants, detaining more than 6,000 last weekend (4-5 August) of whom 1,600 are now set for deportation.

A consortium backing the Gazprom-led South Stream pipeline expects to make a final investment decision within months, says the head of one of its second largest shareholder, Italy’s Eni energy.

Politicians and intellectuals from Northern Cyprus, divided from the South since 1974, called on France and Germany to push the island toward reunification, which would open the door to full EU membership benefits and avoid Turkish assimilation.

Cyprus President Demetris Christofias said today (5 July) that his country, which has just taken over the rotating EU presidency, would seek financial assistance from both the European Union and Russia. While EU conditions were harsh, Moscow’s help was “not forbidden by EU law” and has no strings attached, he said. EurActiv.com reports from Nicosia.

Statements by Turkish leaders who say their country will boycott the Cyprus EU presidency are “insulting and provocative” to Cyprus and the EU as a whole, says Cypriot Foreign Minister Erato Kozakou-Markoulis.

Ten days before it takes over the rotating EU presidency, Cyprus said it would “put on the back burner” the long-standing reunification talks with Turkey to focus instead on a complex Union agenda. Meanwhile, EU Commissioner for enlargement Štefan Füle urged Nicosia to proceed on both tracks.

The Cypriot Ambassador to the EU, Kornelios Korneliou, provided a first insight yesterday (6 June) into the country's ambitions for its EU Presidency period, which begins in July. Meanwhile, Nicosia is readying a bailout request to salvage its banking system, which is heavily exposed to Greek debt.

Turkey, the European Union and the United States have always shared the same broad vision for the European neighbourhood, ranging from stability and prosperity, to peace and democracy in the region. During the Cold War and its immediate aftermath, this shared vision neither necessarily meant agreement on policy means, nor did it call for joint action, as the three followed parallel but not converging foreign policy courses, writes Nathalie Tocci.

Policymakers worry that an Iranian atomic weapon will force the country's neighbours to explore the nuclear option, but that is not the case for Turkey, writes Sinan Ülgen.

In recent months, many project Cyprus' upcoming EU presidency as a deadline (and catalyst) for the resolution of the Cyprus problem, the dispute between Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots over the fate of their island. But in reality, this is nothing but empty rhetoric and the EU remains powerless in resolving the dispute, writes George Kyris.

French lawmakers appealed to their country's highest court yesterday (31 January) to overturn a law that makes it illegal to deny that the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks nearly a century ago was genocide.

The United Nations held six hours of "intensive" talks yesterday (23 January) with the leaders of ethnically split Cyprus as it began a new attempt to break a deadlock in peace talks crucial to Turkey's bid to join the European Union. Cyprus will take up the rotating EU presidency on 1 July 2012.

The EU should take a clear position and create more incentives regarding media freedom in Turkey as part of the country's accession negotiations, write Alison Bethel McKenzie and Steven M. Ellis of the International Press Institute in Vienna.

As the French Senate rushes to consider a bill that would penalise denial of the massacre of over 1 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire, Turkey is lobbying to stop the effort, warning of economic consequences.

The trio of EU Council presidencies "is a joke" - at least in the current form that groups Poland, Denmark and Cyprus, three countries with completely different agendas - says a prominent Brussels-based political analyst.