European Parliament
president makes first official EU visit to Ankara after failed coup.
ISTANBUL — European Parliament President Martin Schulz said Thursday the
EU wanted to “deepen ties” with Turkey after a meeting in Ankara with
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Making the first visit by a leading EU
politician to Turkey since the country’s failed coup in July, the senior German Socialist politician reiterated that
Ankara must protect basic human rights, but also praised the Turkish
people after “frank, open and productive” talks with Erdoğan, Prime
Minister Binali Yildirim and other government officials.
“I have paid tribute to the courage of Turkish citizens who took to the
streets to defend democracy and derailed the plan of the plotters,” Schulz said
in a statement. “Our ties are strong and must be deepened. Turning our
backs to each other would only harm citizens on both sides.”
However, without criticizing the Turkish
government directly, he warned that democracy required not only elections,
but also a free press and separation of powers. Schulz said that while he
understood the government’s response to the coup required “exceptional
measures” to safeguard democratic institutions, “the state of emergency should
not fail the test of proportionality and of the rule of law.”
Overall, he struck a conciliatory tone — a shift for Schulz, once an enthusiastic supporter of Turkey’s EU membership bid who
has more recently been scathing in his criticism of the government, saying the
country is becoming a “one-man state” and issuing warnings about Ankara’s
increasingly authoritarian slant.
His visit
to Ankara comes as the EU and Turkey try to hold together a fragile agreement on
stemming the flow of migrants from the Middle East to Europe, and
as many European politicians question Erdoğan’s commitment to human rights
in the aftermath of the coup attempt.
EU leaders were quick to condemn the
coup, but many also strongly criticized Ankara’s response to it, including tens of
thousands of arrests and the suggestion that the country might reintroduce the
death penalty.
The EU’s focus on the human-rights aspects
of that crackdown angered Ankara, which felt Brussels was not
showing sufficient solidarity with the democratically elected government of a
membership candidate country.
Schulz, seeking to repair strained ties, was in diplomatic mode on
Thursday. He even softened his stance on demands made by many EU politicians
that Turkey change its anti-terror legislation in order to receive visa-free
travel to the EU, suggesting that the law — which has been used to arrest
critical journalists and academics — was not a deal-breaker.
“No progress
can be made [on the visa waiver] at this point because no reforms were made
regarding the anti-terror law, but this is not necessarily the last word,” he
said in a press conference with Yildirim.
The EU’s migration commissioner
Dimitris Avramopoulos, who is overseeing the Turkey-EU
migration deal, was also in Ankara Thursday and echoed Schulz’s comments.
“The EU is a key partner of Turkey,” Avramopoulos told Ömer Celik,
the Turkish minister for EU affairs, at a joint press conference. His only hint
of criticism was to warn that fighting against terrorism “should never be at
the expense of the fundamental rights of our citizens.”
Even before his visit, Schulz made clear
he was trying to mend fences with Ankara. Speaking on Wednesday, the Parliament
president eschewed his usual criticism and said he “aimed to pay tribute
to all the Turkish citizens who courageously took to the streets to defend
democracy” as the coup attempt was unfolding.
Brussels, said Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, had
“failed the test” after the coup and its actions were fueling Euroskepticism in
Turkey. The country had worked hard towards accession, he added, but now
“two out of three people are saying we should stop talks with the EU.”
Turkish officials repeatedly seized on the lack of
high-level visits after the coup as a signal that Europe was turning its back
on Turkey. Only last week, as relations were becoming increasingly strained,
did EU officials announce a series of visits.
More EU missions to Turkey
Following Schulz and Avramopoulos, EU foreign policy
chief Federica Mogherini will pay a visit to Ankara in the coming week. NATO
Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has also scheduled a trip to the Turkish
capital next week, and Erdoğan is set to hold a joint meeting with
Germany’s Angela Merkel, France’s François Hollande and Italy’s Matteo Renzi at
this weekend’s G20 summit in China.
Analysts warn that the EU’s lukewarm response has cost
the bloc its ability to influence Ankara. Senem Aydin Düzgit, an associate
professor at Istanbul’s Sabanci University focusing on EU-Turkey relations,
said the sudden flood of high-level visits could be coming too late.
“The EU’s leverage on Turkey has weakened over the past decade,” she
said. “But after the coup there was a feeling widely shared in the country and
the political elite that the EU turned a blind eye or even wanted a coup to
take place. That has led not only to a further lack of credibility and influence but
— even more dangerously — has fed into growing Euroskepticism.”
She said Turkey’s trust in the EU had
already been eroded by the long-stalled accession process — ongoing with
minimal progress since 2005 — and disagreements over the migration deal
agreed in March.
In return for accepting migrants sent back
from the Greek islands, Turkey was promised visa-free travel to the EU’s
Schengen zone — provided it met 72 benchmarks. Until Schulz’s comments
Thursday, progress on that front had also been stalled: EU officials pointed
out that Turkey had yet to meet the condition of narrowing its broad terrorism
legislation.
The Turkish government, in turn,
said such laws were needed as Turkey faced threats from domestic and
international terror organizations. Ankara has repeatedly said that
without the visa waiver, the deal may collapse.
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