Turkey-EU talks to revive during Ireland presidency
By Sara Rajabova
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has said Ankara "will never beg for membership" in the European Union at a time when both Turkey and the EU are making efforts to speed up the accession talks, currently at a standstill, Todays Zaman newspaper reported on Thursday.
Responding to a question by a Greek Cypriot envoy in Finland about the Turkey's EU progress report, which criticized Ankara not living up to its commitments on the Cyprus problem, Davutoglu said on Wednesday during a conference in Helsinki that there are many paragraphs in the progress report that welcome positive developments in Turkey.
He recalled the unfair treatment of Turkish Cyprus by the 27-member club despite promises to do otherwise.
Davutoglu noted that European leaders had promised to Turkey that all embargoes imposed on Turkish Cyprus would be lifted once the island's Turkish community said "yes" in a referendum in 2004 to a plan drafted by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to reunify the island.
The Turkish FM said the EU didn't keep its promise and accepted Greek Cyprus as its member despite the fact that they voted "no" in the referendum.
Davutoglu stressed that Greek Cypriots would not have a bankrupt economy today if the outcome of the 2004 referendum had been different.
Turkey's EU minister Egemen Bagis said earlier that the Greek Cypriot government should honor its own commitments first before telling Turkey to implement an EU protocol that calls on Ankara to open its ports and airports to traffic from Greek Cyprus.
Turkey froze what were already stagnant relations with the EU in the second half of 2012, when the Greek Cypriot administration assumed the rotating EU presidency.
EU countries have recently expressed regret over Turkey's frozen relations with the EU and refusal to address the Greek Cypriot administration.
Bagis also said during his visit to Dublin that Ireland's EU term presidency that would start as of January 1, 2013 would be a historical turning point in regard to Turkey-EU relations, Anadolu agency reported.
Ireland has said earlier it will aim to revitalize the stagnant relations between the EU and Turkey, claiming that Turkey should be able to open at least one chapter of the EU during the Irish term.
Bagis added that Turkey welcomed Ireland's "sincere efforts" to make progress in Ankara's accession bid and also its willingness to open one or more chapters during the Irish presidency as well as the country's pragmatic approach to Turkey's demand for visa-free travel in the EU.
Turkey is also hopeful that France will unblock talks over EU membership on at least two policy chapters in the coming months ahead of a visit by President Francois Hollande.
Turkey opened accession talks with the EU in 2005, but progress has been slow since then due to the Cyprus dispute as well as opposition to Turkey's membership by some member countries, including France and Germany. Of the 35 chapters that must be successfully negotiated by any candidate country as a condition for membership, only 13 have been opened by Turkey; 17 have been blocked and four have not yet been opened -- only one, on science and research, is provisionally closed. No chapters have been opened in the past two-and-a-half years, since the end of the Spanish presidency in June 2010.
Despite the slow progress and the opposition by some countries, Turkey has continued to push for full membership of the EU and has said it wants to join before 2023, the centenary of its founding as a republic.