Turkey must promptly announce its decision

The European Parliament"s rapporteur for Turkey, Kati Piri, in her latest report on the EU-Turkey relationship, specifically noted that "Turkey is moving away from the Copenhagen criteria," recommends "to completely stop the negotiations".

For those who are at least a little familiar with the history of relations between Turkey and the EU, this situation is not surprising. Because since July 2016, Ankara has suspended communication with the EU, and for 29 months the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights are not valid on the territory of Turkey. Ankara even then announced its decision to Strasbourg, and the latter agreed with this. Moreover, even without that, the leaders from the highest echelon of power with the aim of putting an end to Turkey"s relations with the Council of Europe, incessantly, in the 7/24 regime, showered Brussels with relevant threats. Turkey has been trying to join the EU for exactly 60 years. In the framework of some agreements, since 1960, Ankara began to export "labor" to Germany, and the common people of Turkey could use the currency thanks to money sent from EU countries by migrant workers.

The appeal of Turgut Ozal regarding Turkey"s full membership in the EU in 1987 followed the signing of the "Agreement on the Customs Union" on March 6, 1995 by Tansu Chillar. In December 1999, when Ankara boycotted the EU summit in Helsinki, Union officials went to Ankara with a bow to Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit.

After coming to power on November 3, 2002, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), Prime Minister Abdullah Gul, first of all, began "to seek the start of negotiations on full EU membership". At the December summit in Copenhagen, Prime Minister, Gul, and Chairman of the AKP, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was forbidden to engage in political activities, vainly knocked down all thresholds with a request to start negotiations a little earlier and did not achieve anything.

At that time, Abdullah Gul said: "We want to become a member of the EU to improve the standard of living of our country. If membership negotiations do not start, we will rename the "Copenhagen criteria" into "Ankara criteria" and continue to carry out our reforms. " And when the EU appointed the start of negotiations on Turkey"s full membership to the EU in October 2005, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul flew to Brussels in the middle of the night. And when he, having signed the corresponding document, returned, then in Ankara they made a festive salute. Part of the EU requirements was met, resulting in a large amount of foreign investment in the country.

In the second period of the AKP rule (2007-2011), with the support of FETÖ, the army was purged, and at that time the EU was supported by the authorities. In the third coming to power (2011-2015), the AKP addressed issues of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. The task of the EU Council of Ministers has ceased to be reforms and negotiations, with Brussels and Strasbourg were busy with disputes and conflicts. When in 2006 the EU did not consider it necessary to observe the elections in Turkey, in 2016 re-activated the observation mechanism, Ankara had already managed to declare several times that it turned away from Western values ​​long ago.

The beginning of the process of "extreme" discrepancies between Ankara and Brussels was the mass exodus of refugees from Syria. So, in the fall of 2015, when the Bulgarians who had accumulated on the border (before that they were going to Greece on the Aegean Sea) began to threaten the borders of the EU, Turkey decided to prevent this danger by asking for this 3 billion euros from the EU, and the latter gave its consent.

Although the then Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu claimed that "he used the Kaiser method to get this money," President Erdogan said that it was thanks to him that he received these 3 billion euros. However, after some time, it became known that in order to give these funds, the EU requires some radical changes in the laws of Turkey.

And one of these requirements concerned the Law on the Suppression of Terrorism. Moreover, the EU insisted that this be done in a very short time, and Turkey refused to comply with this requirement. Since then, those 3 billion euros have not been heard (according to the latest data, the EU Accounts Chamber conducted a serious investigation, but was never able to determine where 1 billion euros of this amount went). So, after these ill-fated 3 billion euros, the fate of which is unknown, neither the "full membership" nor the "talks" are out of the question.

For comparison, the Libyan field marshal Khalifa Belqasim Haftar to prevent refugees from entering the territories of the EU and Italy under his control, from Italy, requested 20 billion euros from the EU and proposed a specific plan.

Without turning to the European Parliament, Turkey continued on its way, using the Ankara criteria announced in 2002 by Abdullah Gul. That would be a very good step if, without waiting for the appeal of the European Parliament, Ankara, without delaying it later, already declared that it was completely out of the ill-fated negotiations, because international organizations and unions require that their criteria be met by all their member countries. Remaining in any organizations or unions without complying with their criteria promises nothing except empty disputes; and Azerbaijan, which in the 17 years of its relations with the Council of Europe has faced so many problems, should take adequate steps. The ongoing events shows that, in the end, the EU itself will take this step.