Ankara fumes as European Parliament votes to suspend EU talks
The European Parliament called on the European Union to halt membership negotiations with Turkey, citing a failure to respect the bloc’s standards on human rights, while Ankara accuses the legislators of giving in to right-wing populism.
ISTANBUL — Turkey fired back at the European Parliament after it called for the suspension of membership negotiations over its human rights record, calling the resolution “worthless” and “discriminatory” and sounding an alarm about right-wing populism taking root in Europe.
On Wednesday, the Strasbourg-based assembly approved a report that said Ankara’s failure to protect rights and the rule of law and its transition to an executive presidential system last year that concentrates power in one man’s hands meant that the membership process should be frozen.
The vote is only advisory, and it is up to European governments to decide whether to shelve the talks. But it was still a sharp rebuke of Turkey, whose long-running bid to join the affluent bloc has been bogged down for years over its slow pace of reforms, a lack of a settlement on Cyprus and Europe’s reluctance to admit a populous Muslim nation. Turkey began formally negotiating its entry into the EU in 2005.
“We are concerned for the EU’s future and our common values now that extreme right and left-wing currents have begun to hold sway over the EP, turning the report into an exclusionary, discriminatory and populist text that does not reflect reality,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “This advisory decision is meaningless for us.”
