EU/TURKEY: Turkey yesterday rejected a French-German offer for Ankara to begin talks on joining the European Union in 2005, setting the stage for a clash at next week's landmark EU summit on enlargement.
The Prime Minister, Mr Abdullah Gul, warned that Turkey was losing patience and angrily asserted nothing less than a firm date for opening negotiations would do. "They have nothing more to say to us," Mr Gul said, referring to EU leaders who will meet in Copenhagen next week to invite 10 countries to join the EU. "Turkey is rightfully demanding a date to begin negotiations."
The leader of the governing party, Mr Recep Tayyip Erdogan, dismissed as "unacceptable" the offer made on Thursday by French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder to start talks in 2005 if enough progress is made on reforms. "If you impose a new delay on Turkey, which has been waiting more than 40 years at Europe's door . . . history will not forgive you," Mr Erdogan said in a television interview.
Mr Gul warned: "If Turkey's membership remains in limbo and is put off indefinitely, it will not be possible to maintain tomorrow the same level of enthusiasm towards the EU."
Turkey, which applied for membership in 1987 but was only formally declared a candidate 12 years later, wants EU leaders to give it a firm date to start membership talks at the summit.
Of the candidate countries, Turkey is the only one that has failed to open accession talks, prompting angry statements from Ankara that European leaders are discriminating against the mainly Muslim country.
Mr Erdogan accused the EU of double standards, arguing that Turkey came closer to meeting the criteria for membership than the other candidate countries.
In August, Ankara adopted major democratic reforms, among them the abolition of the death penalty and the recognition of cultural freedoms for the Kurdish minority, to boost its EU credentials.
Earlier this week, Mr Erdogan's Justice and Development Party submitted to parliament two new judicial reform packages. - (AFP)