Financial Times: European Union’s scornful approach to Turkey

Since 2004 Turkey has been holding at head of state level talks with the EU to join the family, but the EU implicitly reneged on that while letting the talks stalemate, mostly driven by Greek Cypriot obstructionism, “Financial Times” magazine writes in a story titled “European Union’s scornful approach to Turkey.”

“German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy embrace the inconsistency of publicly opposing Turkey’s accession,” reads the story.

Dr. Kirsty Hyghes has written in the story that Turkey’s threats to freeze relations with the EU, when the Republic of Cyprus takes over the EU presidency in July 2012.

That the EU has let the Cyprus problem dominate its relations with Turkey is a very serious case of the tail wagging the dog. At a time when both the EU and Turkey – in quite uncoordinated manner – are imposing sanctions on Syria and when Turkey is indeed adopting a more strategic, if also grandstanding, approach in response to the Arab spring than the EU, the EU’s calculated deprioritising of Turkey looks unwise. If sparks do start to fly between Turkey, Cyprus and Israel in the gas dispute, the best hope for knocking heads together will be the US. While the EU’s leaders struggle with the euro crisis, they may not care much about this major foreign policy failure – but they should, reads the story.