Cyprus-Forum.com

[brother]

Tense countdown


The EU indicates Ankara will have to accept tough conditions, including de facto recognition of the Greek Cypriot administration, to open long-delayed entry talks

ANKARA - Turkish Daily News

Ankara and Brussels were heading to a looming confrontation yesterday as the moment of truth in Turkey’s quest for membership in the European Union approaches and the Cyprus problem, which has marred relations for decades, again appeared to be at the heart of the tension.

“The EU, having been deceived, should first ask for an explanation. Why did it import the problem in the first place?” Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül asked at a press conference before flying to The Hague to meet his EU and Middle East counterparts at a two-day Euro-Mediterranean meeting.
His statement was a response to the EU, which indicated that Ankara will have to accept tough conditions, including de facto recognition of the Greek Cypriot administration, to open long-delayed entry talks.

“We have our own expectations,” Gül said, emphasizing that the EU should first give the go-ahead for the start of talks. He also played down the Dutch presidency's document, saying many such documents are circulated from time to time, mostly for tactical reasons.
EU leaders will decide at a summit on Dec. 17 whether to open the entry talks with Turkey, a candidate since 1999. The EU’s executive arm, the commission, said in an Oct. 6 report that Turkey has fulfilled the Copenhagen criteria and thus recommended that talks begin. But it set a number of conditions, including permanent restrictions on labor migration from Turkey, and emphasized that Turkey should amend its 1963 Association Agreement to take account of  the accession of new members into the EU, including the internationally recognized Greek Cyprus.

To the deep discontent of Turkey, the commission also said that the talks would be an open-ended process whose outcome cannot be guaranteed.
A draft statement circulated by the Dutch EU presidency and obtained by Reuters, set to be debated by EU ambassadors for the first time on Wednesday, anticipates that Turkey will commit itself to amending its 1963 Association Agreement with the EU to take account of the accession of 10 new member states.
An EU diplomat told Reuters that this would be tantamount to de facto recognition of the Nicosia government, thus removing the key Greek Cypriot objection to opening entry talks with Ankara.

"We're not against the start of admission talks between Turkey and the European Union," Greek Cypriot leader Tassos Papadopoulos was quoted as saying after meeting his Slovak counterpart, Ivan Gasparovic, in Bratislava yesterday..
"Turkey, however, has to meet all the criteria as any other joining country, and has to comply with all its obligations toward the union as well as Cyprus," Papadopoulos said.
Slovakia "supports the start of the talks, but with no given time frame for the admission," Gasparovic said.
The draft also left blank the crucial wording of the decision on whether and when to open entry negotiations with Ankara for leaders to fill in at their Dec. 16-17 summit.
It welcomed "the decisive progress made by Turkey in its far-reaching reform process" but set a strict framework for negotiations, saying membership talks could not be concluded until the bloc had agreed on its post-2014 budget.

'Nothing but full membership'

Turkish leaders have made it clear several times that Turkey will not accept anything that falls short of membership. Gül earlier yesterday had dismissed suggestions that Turkey should be granted associate status rather than full membership in the EU.
Nicolas Sarkozy, who took over leadership of French President Jacques Chirac's governing party on Sunday, said he was opposed to Turkey's entry into the EU, preferring instead to see Turkey "associated" with Europe.

"There is no alternative to full membership for Turkey. Everyone should know this," Gül said.
"What is important to note is that agreements are binding, that there is consistency and an honoring of what has been signed," Gül told reporters, without mentioning Sarkozy by name. "It is a question of continuity in decisions taken, even if the ideas are different. I am sure everybody will heed this rule."
Gül's remarks, ahead of the Dec. 17 summit of EU leaders that will decide whether to open membership talks with Turkey, came at a joint press conference during a visit by Hungarian Foreign Minister Ferenc Somogyi.
Somogyi said he hoped EU leaders would unanimously agree to start the talks with Turkey. Hungary was among 10 nations that joined the EU in May.

"As a new member of the European Union, we are ready to help Turkey," the Anatolia news agency quoted Somogyi as saying.
Turkish leaders were irked by the commission’s recommendation that talks would be open-ended and subject to suspension upon the request of two-thirds of EU members.

The draft did not spell out any explicit alternative to membership, as sought by France and Austria, if Turkey does not meet all EU requirements. But it left a blank paragraph on "the goal and outcome of the negotiations," referring to the commission recommendation that talks would be an "open-ended process whose outcome cannot be guaranteed beforehand."
But it went beyond the commission's recommendation, giving one-third of EU members the right to seek a suspension of talks if Ankara goes back on reforms. The commission has proposed that only the EU executive would have the power to propose halting the talks.
The Dutch draft said: "In the case of a serious and persistent breach in a candidate state of the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and the rule of law on which the Union is founded, the Commission will, at its own initiative or on the request of at least one-third of member states, recommend the suspension of negotiations and propose the conditions for eventual resumption.

"The Council will decide by qualified majority on such a recommendation, after having heard the candidate state, whether to suspend the negotiations on the conditions for their resumption."
The document said EU governments would set "benchmarks" for opening and concluding negotiations on each policy area -- giving Brussels the ability to make Turkey reach certain standards just to start talks on individual issues.

Blair: No special hurdle

In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a firm supporter of Turkey’s membership bid, said Ankara should face no more hurdles in negotiations to join the EU than other prospective members. "It should be determined according to the same criteria and in the same way as any other application," he told a news conference.
"Turkey is not asking for favorable treatment; it is asking for the same treatment, and it should get the same treatment," he said.

[Bananiot]

We are mere two weeks away from D Day! The count down has started. I am afraid the GC side is utterly unprepared for this important day. We have not specified what we want and we have not withdrawn the daemonisation of the A plan that one may have understood before the referendum. All of a sudden, Papadopoulos proclaims to the ecstatic world that the A plan cannot be got rid of so easy and that it will always be in front of us. Further more, he claims that any future solution will need to be based on the A plan! Believe me, this is Papadopoulos speaking!

Papadopoulos and Christofias are trying hard to buy time but in so doing they sacrifice any prospectives for a solution or positive movement towards this direction. They make noises about exercising veto and enforced recognition of the RoC by Turkey. In the meantime, Turkey has been absolved of all responsibilities and the official newspaper of the EU "European Voice" proclaims Mr Ertogan to be the European leader of the year. Together with Gul Ertogan embarks on a european tour with the cheque book in his hand, looking for names to fill in.

One does not need to be a professor to understand that under the circumstances Turkey will remain light years ahead of us. our government, I put it to you, will soon be looking for scapegoats to shoulder its miserable failures.

[brother]

That is not a happy conclusion.