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| MEPs take part in a voting session at the European Parliament in Strasbourg |
Leading members of the European Union’s parliament on Tuesday called for a halt to membership talks with Turkey because of its post-coup purges, but the bloc’s top diplomat warned against it.
“Our message to Turkey is very clear: accession negotiations should be frozen immediately,” said Manfred Weber, the head of the largest faction in the European Parliament, the centre-right European People’s Party.
He was echoed by others, including Guy Verhofstadt of the liberals’ alliance:
“There is a broad, broad majority in this house to say you have to freeze accession talks for the moment and put a number of conditions to restart them once Turkey is compliant.”
The EU has turned increasingly critical of Turkey, where more than 110,000 people – including soldiers, academics, judges, journalists and Kurdish leaders – have been suspended from their positions or dismissed over their alleged backing for the plotters of a failed military coup in July.
Some 36,000 have been arrested and media outlets shut. Critics accuse President Tayyip Erdogan of using the botched coup as a pretext to go after his critics.
“Turkey under Mr Erdogan is more and more drifting towards an authoritarian regime,” said Gianni Pitella, the leader of the socialist group, the parliament’s second biggest.
“Our political message towards Turkey is that human rights, civil rights, democracy are non-negotiable if you want to be part of the EU.”
EU leaders are due to discuss Turkey again when they meet in Brussels on Dec 15-16.
The bloc’s top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, urged caution.
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| A woman adjusts the Turkish flag next to the EU flag |
“I think the best way to strengthen Turkish democracy … is by engaging with Turkey, keeping channels open,” she told the parliament session.
“If the accession process came to an end, I believe we would both find ourselves in a lose-lose scenario.”
Erdogan has said the bloc would have to “live with the consequences” if it stopped the talks and that Ankara could instead join an security alliance run by Russia and China.
The EU promised in March to speed up Ankara’s accession talks in exchange for its help in keeping migrants away from European shores.
Erdogan accuses the EU of failing to understand the gravity of the situation in Turkey and has said he could put the EU talks to a national referendum next year.
Turkey still hopes to win visa-free travel to the EU but earlier promises of granting the privilege to Ankara by the end of this year now seem distant.
Austria and Luxembourg have led calls to stop Turkey’s membership talks. Germany, France and most other EU states for now back continued engagement and fear putting at risk Turkey’s collaboration on migration.
All stress, however, that the talks would come to an end if Turkey reinstated the death penalty
