The European Union is starting dialogue to bring Turkey closer to the 27, Portugal’s minister of foreign affairs has told jounalists, adding that it was necessary to understand Ankara’s willingness to “move forward on some issues” in relations.
“We had the opportunity to talk about Turkey [on] what can be done to relaunch a dialogue that has been absent from our discussions over the last couple of years,” said the minister, João Gomes Cravinho, outside an EU Foreign Affairs Council that was still taking place in Brussels.
According to the minister, there is a consensus among the 27 member states of the EU bloc that “it is essential to listen to Turkey and understand if there is a willingness to move forward on some essential issues.
“There are possibilities [to progress in the accession process] but it depends a lot on Turkish willingness to start a new chapter in the relationship with the EU,” he stressed.
Ahead of last week’s North Atlantic Treaty Organisation summit in Lithuania, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was recently re-elected, raised the bar regarding Sweden’s future membership of the NATO, making this conditional on the EU resuming accession negotiations with Turkey.
“First, open the way for Turkey’s accession to the EU, and then we will open the way for Sweden [to join Nato], just as we did for Finland,” Erdogan said at the time.
He eventually agreed to send Sweden’s NATO accession protocol to Turkey’s parliament for ratification – as yet with no date – but the signal from his government was thus given.
Turkey has been a formal candidate for EU membership since 2005, but the process has all but stalled since several indicators pointed to a regression in the quality of the country’s democracy and respect for human rights, including freedom of religion, gender identity and sexual orientation.
Erdogan presents himself as a head of state who wants to safeguard and encourage the country’s Muslim heritage.
