'You Don’t Understand' Fury as Macron Brands Turkey 'Anti-European'

• 08.30.2018, 13:14
•  Europe,  Region

GETTY

TURKEY has French President Emmanuel Macron of failing to “understand” the realities facing the country, after he called for Turkey’s long-stalled membership talks with the European Union to be dropped and condemned President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s anti-Brussels vision.

The French centrist said that while he was in favour of a “strategic partnership” between Ankara and the bloc, the idea of a ‘European’ Turkey remained unlikely.

Mr Macron on Monday said his Turkish counterpart had a “pan-Islamic project,” which he described as “anti-European,” and whose measures he said go against the bloc’s values and principles.

The 40-year-old leader also said that the Turkey of Mr Erdogan is “not the Turkey of President Kemal,” referring to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who founded the secular republic in 1923 following the collapse of the Ottoman empire.

Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy expressed the government’s “sadness” over the French centrist’s comments, adding that Mr Macron has “once again shown he far from understands Turkey’s realities”.

Mr Macron, an ardent defender of the European project, argued that Brussels should focus on building a “strategic partnership” with Ankara, and urged an end to the “hypocrisy” of continuing the 13-year-long accession talks, which ground to a halt after a failed military coup in July 2016 led to a brutal and chaotic police crackdown, Express reports.

Mr Macron asked French ambassadors in Paris: “Do we think today that in a clear and honest manner we can continue accession negotiations with Turkey to join the European Union?”

Out of the 35 policy “chapters” needed to be closed to join the EU, only 16 have been opened with just one closed.

Mr Aksoy also criticised Mr Macron’s claim that Mr Erdogan’s vision is anti-European, saying: “The idea that our country is anti-European has no relation with the truth.”

Relations between Brussels and Ankara deteriorated following EU leaders’ criticism of the crackdown that followed the attempted putsch, with Europe expressing concern over the decline of the rule of law in Turkey.

Mr Erdogan, for his part, made clear following his re-election in June that joining the EU remained a “strategic goal” for the country.

Mr Macron’s comments were made on the same day that Turkey’s treasury and finance minister Berat Albayrak, the president’s son-in-law, met with his French counterpart Bruno Le Maire in Paris.