Turkey must soften tone to avoid isolation: leading MEP
Turkey has become internationally isolated and must dial down its rhetoric if it wants to win key concessions from the European Union, a leading MEP said Wednesday (6 December).
Nacho Sánchez Amor, the European Parliament’s rapporteur on Turkey, said Ankara’s abrasive talk on foreign affairs was one of the main impediments to improving relations with Brussels.
Turkey is seeking to simplify European visa access for its citizens and to update a 1995 customs agreement with the bloc that could help boost exports.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell last week recommended offering Turkey both in return for a series of concessions.
These included Turkey clamping down on Russian sanctions evasion and progress on the issue of the divided island of Cyprus.
Sánchez Amor added another condition on the last day of a fact-finding mission to Turkey that included meetings with opposition groups.
“To refrain from using an aggressive tone, a threatening tone, is free and easy,” he told reporters in Istanbul.
“You are completely isolated. The only real friend you have is Azerbaijan,” Sánchez Amor said.
Turkey has been an official candidate to join the European Union since 1999. But the process has been effectively frozen since 2018 because of European concerns about Turkey’s human rights record and adventurous foreign policy.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will be making a rare visit to Greece this week aimed at warming ties between the two historic foes.
But he bashed the West repeatedly during his May re-election campaign and used a closely-watched visit to Germany last month to condemn Berlin’s support for Israel in its war with Hamas.
Sánchez Amor said he understood that such rhetoric played well with the Turkish public.
“I know that many decisions of Turkey’s foreign policy have a domestic approach,” he said.
“To be a good cooperative neighbour or to be a member, there are different paths and conditions,” he said.
(Edited by Georgi Gotev)
