Erdogan intensifies Turkish effort to join EU

independent
Reuters
Thursday 7 July 2011
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan reshuffled his cabinet yesterday, retaining Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek to manage the overheating economy and creating a new ministry to press Turkey's campaign to join the EU....more...
read more: independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/erdogan-intensifies-turkish-effort-to-join-eu-2307943.html

On the European Union – Turkey Customs Union

europe's world
24/06/2011

Author : CASE - Center for Social and Economic Research

The paper studies the European Union - Turkey Customs Union of 1995.

Read more in CASE Network Studies and Analyses No. 426: On the European Union – Turkey Customs Union by Sübidey Togan.

read more: europe's world
http://www.europesworld.org/NewEnglish/Home_old/PartnerPosts/tabid/671/PostID/2606/OntheEuropeanUnionTurkeyCustomsUnion.aspx
http://www.case-research.eu/upload/publikacja_plik/34294916_CNSA_2011_426.pdf

Turkey, EU search for way forward

se times
28/06/2011

Reviving Turkey's stalled EU negotiations requires moves by both sides, experts say.
By Menekse Tokyay for Southeast European Times in Istanbul -- 28/06/11
It has been more than six years since the EU agreed to launch accession negotiations with Turkey. Since that time, only one chapter -- Science and Research -- has been closed.

The rest are in limbo, with Brussels having declared that none can be wrapped up until a deadlock is resolved over opening Turkish ports and airports to traffic from Cyprus....more...
read more: se times
http://www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/features/2011/06/28/feature-01

Turkish Vote Result Seen as Opportunity for E.U.

ny times
By JUDY DEMPSEY

Published: June 14, 2011
BERLIN — The resounding electoral victory of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has turned the spotlight to the European Union, which now must decide what kind of long-term strategy and relationship it wants with Turkey, analysts said.

With Mr. Erdogan about to embark on a third term as leader of a country straddling Europe, the Middle East and the Caucasus, the Union will be dealing with a Turkish leadership that is more confident, more assertive and more willing than ever to play a greater role in the region.....more...
read more: ny times
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/world/europe/15iht-turkey15.html?ref=europe

Turkey accuses EU of "double standards"

b92.net

World Tuesday 19.04.2011 16:57

Source: Tanjug
LJUBLJANA -- Turkish Minister for European Affairs Egemen Bagis says Europe is facing a credibility problem when it comes to his country. According to Bagis, who is currently on a visit to Slovenia, Turkey was promised EU membership in 1959....more...

read more: b92.net

http://www.b92.net/eng/news/world-article.php?yyyy=2011&mm=04&dd=19&nav_id=73896

Croatia moves closer to EU membership, Turkey stalls

eu observer.com

VALENTINA POP
20.04.2011 @ 12:35 CET
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Croatia on Tuesday (19 April) concluded negotiations in two more areas, agriculture and budgetary issues, getting closer to finishing EU accession talks by the end of June, despite a rise in anti-EU sentiments after the sentence issued by the international court in the Hague for war crimes.

"In these politically difficult times, it is extremely important we send a positive message to each Croatian citizen and to each EU citizen," Hungarian foreign minister Janos Martonyi said during a press conference after chairing the EU-Croatia accession conference....more...

read more: eu observer.com

http://euobserver.com/887/32216

Why should Turkey play by western rules?

europe's world

06/04/2011 Author : CIDOB (Spain)

Notes internacionals CIDOB, no. 26 Turkey has re-emerged as a confident regional power in areas of vital interest to the European Union and the United States. It is no longer the pliant supplicant that the Europe and the United States West imagined it would forever remain. It is economically vibrant and politically self confident. It has outgrown the role allotted to it by the West. This is one reading of Turkey’s new found confidence. A second very fashionable one is that Turkey is seeking to reclaim leadership in the lands of the former Ottoman Empire, a reading which is comforted by the Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s goal ofPax Ottomana. The rift with Israel over Gaza and the angry rhetoric of the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan carry dangerous undertones for some observers in Europe and for those in Turkey committed to the secularist political settlement of modern Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Whatever the truth, the contrast is palpable between Turkey’s new regional status and the disdain shown by France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel....more...

read more: europe's world

http://www.europesworld.org/NewEnglish/Home_old/PartnerPosts/tabid/671/PostID/2418/WhyshouldTurkeyplaybywesternrules.aspx

Anatolia inside

blogactiv.eu

Posted by cem on 11/04/11

“The English-speaking world is divided into those who have read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and those who are going to read them.” Sunday Times. I say the world is divided into those who are aware of the importance of a European Union with Turkey within it and those who are going to be aware of that....more...

read more: blogactiv.eu

http://turkey.blogactiv.eu/2011/04/11/anatolia-inside/

How to make up with Ankara

euractiv

Published: 25 February 2011 Updated: 28 February 2011
Although France's opposition to Turkish accession creates tension in the two countries' relations, events in Southern Mediterranean offer a unique opportunity for strategic cooperation between the European Union and Turkey, writes Sinan Ülgen, a former diplomat, visiting scholar with Carnegie Europe in Brussels and president of Turkish think-tank EDAM in Istanbul.
The following contribution was sent exclusively to EurActiv by Sinan Ülgen. It was first published in French on EurActiv.fr and was translated from the original French by EurActiv.com....more...

read more: euractiv

http://www.euractiv.com/en/east-mediterranean/ankara-analysis-502527

EP urges constitutional reform in Turkey

se times

10/03/2011
A toughly worded report draws an angry response from Ankara.
(Cumhurriyet, Milliyet, Zaman, Vatan - 10/03/11; World Bulletin, Anadolu news agency - 09/03/11)

The European Parliament's (EP) Committee on Foreign Affairs has ratified a resolution on Turkey's progress in EU accession that is widely viewed as the most critical report in recent years.
It was adopted on Wednesday (March 9th) by a large majority, following intense debates among members -- and particularly between the Christian Democrats and Socialists.
The former eventually withdrew a proposed amendment suggesting the possibility of a privileged partnership for Turkey as an alternative to full EU membership, while the latter pushed for text stating that full EU membership is the goal. The final text describes the negotiations as a long-lasting and open-ended process.
The resolution, put forward by rapporteur Ria Oomen-Ruijten, describes the accession process as having reached a deadlock. The Cyprus issue, lack of co-operation among Turkish political parties, and weakening respect for basic rights in Turkey are the key factors that hamper accession talks, Oomen-Ruijten said during the debate. ...more...

read more: se times

http://www.setimes.com/cocoon/setimes/xhtml/en_GB/features/setimes/features/2011/03/10/feature-04

The story of the EU-Turkey relations

blogativ.eu

Posted by cem on 21/02/11
Hereunder Sarkozy and Merkel’s messages to Turkey as well as their hidden agenda:
“Although you are an official candidate to the EU and that the EU-Turkey negotiations started, you can’t be an EU member because you are not European. Anyway, we froze 8 chapters of the negotiations process because you don’t implement the Customs Union to the Greek Cypriots”.
And comander Merkel must say to Sarkozy: “Thank God we made them members of the EU in 2004 before the negotiations with Turkey started. So our Austrian friends haven’t to do that dirty job and can sigh in their sleep”.
Well, even if the Turkish Cypriots decide to forget their Turkish identity and accept to be the prisoners of the rulers of Shawshank, even if Turkey decides to desert the Turkish Cypriots and take the risk to not protect them anymore with its soldiers who prevented them from being all killed by the Greek Cypriots in 1974, Turkey is not sure of becoming an EU member. Because Merkel and Sarkozy have decided to deny the signatures of the EU of 1963, 1999 and 2004. In spite of these commitments, these two so-called leaders decided that Turkey is not European.

read more blogactiv.eu

http://turkey.blogactiv.eu/2011/02/21/the-story-of-the-eu-turkey-relations/

Daniel Hannan: “The EU will regret its dishonest, humiliating treatment of Turkey”

blogactiv.eu

Posted by cem on 02/03/11

r Hannan’s article was published in the Daily Telegraph last year. It is here.
I quote:
“Ankara has had a shabby deal from Brussels over its bid for EU membership, says Daniel Hannan.”
“David Cameron was too polite to say it in so many words, but his audience of Turkish MPs got the point: the EU is treating them shabbily.
Singly, Europe’s governments have perfectly consistent policies. Some countries want, in Gladstone’s unhappy phrase, “to bundle the Turk, bag and baggage, out of Europe”. France, Austria and (less vocally) Germany are in this camp. Others, led by Britain, see Turkish membership as strategically valuable: a way to bolster the world’s chief Muslim democracy and perhaps, in the process, to dilute Euro-federalism.”

read more: blogactiv.eu

http://turkey.blogactiv.eu/2011/03/02/daniel-hannan-the-eu-will-regret-its-dishonest-humiliating-treatment-of-turkey/