Prime minister Binali Yildirim warns of tensions with the EU after vote urged ministers to freeze talks on its accession

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Turkey has reacted angrily after the European parliament urged governments to freeze EU membership talks in a powerful symbolic vote that will heighten tensions and could endanger a landmark migration deal.

MEPs in Strasbourg voted by 471 to 37 to halt Turkey’s EU accession talks, with politicians ranging from the Conservative group to the Greens lining up to back a resolution that condemned the Turkish government’s “disproportionate repressive measures” after a failed military coup in July. There were 107 abstentions.

The Turkish prime minister, Binali Yildirim, dismissed the vote as being of no importance, but warned that ties with the EU were already strained. “We expect EU leaders to stand up against this lack of vision,” he said. “The EU should decide whether it wants to continue its future vision with or without Turkey.”

Earlier this week, the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, preemptively hit out at the vote, saying it had “no value at all”. Erdoğan has repeatedly said he could tear up a migration pact between Turkey and the EU if Europe fails to deliver on accession talks or visa-free travel.

The parliament’s vote is non-binding, but represents a dramatic step ahead ahead of a crucial meeting of EU ministers next month. Foreign ministers will debate Turkey’s 11-year-old EU membership bid in December as concern grows about the crackdown launched by Erdoğan following the botched coup.



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The vote is likely to add to recriminations over a landmark migration deal the EU and Turkey agreed in March. Turkey has stepped up efforts against people smugglers, which has contributed to a dramatic reduction in the flow of refugees and migrants seeking to travel to Europe over the Aegean sea.

In exchange, the EU has promised Turkey €3bn (£2.5bn) to help Ankara cope with three million refugees, visa-free travel for Turkish citizens and progress on EU membership talks.



The two sides are at odds, however, over whether Turkey has met the conditions for visa-free travel, with the Council of Europe called in to break the impasse. The discussion on halting membership talks has soured relations even further.

Erdoğan has already hit back at the vote. Speaking on Wednesday at a conference in Istanbul, he said: “I want to say in advance from here and address the whole world watching on their TV screens: this vote has no value at all, no matter what result emerges.”

Turkey’s deputy prime minister, Numan Kurtulmuş, said Europe’s partnership with Turkey was at stake as a result of the vote.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Syrian refugees at a refugee camp in Osmaniye, Turkey. Photograph: Umit Bektas/Reuters

“With this vote, the European parliament will freeze itself out of any constructive dialogue with Turkey and raise further serious questions over Europe’s reliability as a partner,” he said in a statement.

EU diplomats reacted with dismay to the parliament’s decision. Writing on Twitter, the former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt accused MEPs of taking “a populist short-term rather than strategic long-term approach” in relations with Turkey.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said earlier this week that halting accession talks would be a “lose-lose scenario”. She told MEPs Europe risked giving up a vital channel for dialogue. “We should also ask ourselves which tools and instruments we have at our disposal in order to increase, and not reduce, our leverage on Turkey’s reforms and on its society,” she said.



MEPs wanted to send a message to Erdoğan in the aftermath of the coup attempt. Nearly 130,000 state employees have been sacked and a wide-ranging media crackdown has ensued. Ankara has dismissed or arrested tens of thousands of bureaucrats, judges, military officers and police accused of links to Fethullah Gülen, a US-based preacher whose group is widely believed in Turkey to have masterminded the putsch.

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Brussels has repeatedly criticised the crackdown, saying it goes far beyond the perpetrators and officials have said the measures enacted under emergency rule call into question Turkey’s commitment to EU values. Erdoğan has also said he would sign into law a proposal to bring back the death penalty if such a motion passes in the Turkish general assembly, another measure that would jeopardise negotiations.

The parliament resolution stated that accession talks should only be restarted once Turkey lifted its measures and returned to the rule of law. Some MEPs have always doubted whether Turkey should be part of the EU.



Alexander Lambsdorff, a European parliament vice president who represents the liberal group, said the membership talks were “fundamentally dishonest”. “Neither Turkey nor EU members are actually interested in the success of negotiations,” he said.

The EU and Turkey have spent years pursuing increasingly difficult accession talks. Negotiations were launched in 2005, almost two decades after Turkey made its application in 1987.

In recent days, Turkish officials have raised the prospect of ending negotiations as Ankara bristles at what it perceives as a lack of support for its government in the aftermath of the coup attempt.



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Erdoğan said last week that Turkey could hold a referendum on the EU negotiations as early as next year, potentially ending a campaign to join the bloc that was once at the centre of his Justice and Development party’s platform.



“Let’s wait until the end of the year and then go to the people,” Erdoğan said in a speech in Ankara. “Let’s go to the people since they will make the final call. Even Britain went to the people. Britain said: ‘Let’s exit,’ and they left.”



His statements, and those of officials since, highlight the extent to which Turkey’s relations with Europe have deteriorated since negotiating the migration deal.

“I guess those who offer a safe haven for terrorists fleeing Turkey are also prepared for a couple of million refugees,” he said last week, repeating his view that Europe sides with terrorist organisations.



The Turkish government has long accused Europe of providing a safe haven to the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state and is deemed a terrorist group by the EU.