TIMES ONLINE: Turkey is growing impatient with being cold-shouldered by the European Union, and resistance to its bid for membership is stoking Ankara’s ambition to turn towards the Muslim world.
President Gül said that the EU and its leaders stood at an historic crossroads and had to decide whether or not to welcome Turkey in.
“They are at a point where they need to decide whether the Union is a closed entity, whether the current borders of the EU will define it for eternity, or whether it should plan 50 years ahead and think of its grandchildren, the future,” he told The Times and other European newspapers in his hillside palace.
The President, who hails from the Islamist AK (Justice and Development) party, voiced frustration with the near-freeze in Turkey’s accession talks with the EU, which opened in 2005. He was scathing over what he said was the EU’s use of the dispute over Turkish northern Cyprus to stall discussions with Brussels. Turkey, the only country to recognise northern Cyprus as a state, could not accept northern Cypriots being treated “like criminals, murderers and money-launderers”, he said.
He was also critical of the outright opposition voiced by President Sarkozy of France to Turkish membership and the coolness received from Chancellor Merkel of Germany. Mr Sarkozy’s argument, shared less openly by many other continental politicians, is that the EU’s frontier must never extend into Asia Minor. >>> Charles Bremner in Ankara | Thursday, May 13, 2010
