Turkey not eager for a tit-for-tat with EU

ANKARA

Turkish EU Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu holds a meeting with Stephan Weil, minister-president of Lower Saxony, in Ankara, May 5. AA Photo

Turkish EU Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu has stated that his country has no intention of harming the interests of the European Union just because it is not pleased with the Ankara’s approach to obtaining full membership status.

“Our expectation from the EU is to approach Turkey in a sincere way, to obey to the principle of pacta sunt servanda [a principle of international law which means in Latin that agreements must be kept] and to act in line with association agreements that have signed. In this regard, political obstacles in front of chapters which should particularly be opened shall be removed. Here, when we take the expression ‘tit-for-tat’ in positive meaning, then this negotiation would progress with less problem and accelerate if both sides do their parts,” Çavuşoğlu said May 5 during a meeting with Stephan Weil, minister-president of Lower Saxony.

His comments came in an apparent response to remarks by Stefano Manservisi, who was recently named the new head of the EU Delegation to Turkey.

“We have both to get out of this sort of tit-for-tat. The accession negotiations are not a foreign policy negotiation. It has always been a process where a candidate is willing to enter to a group. Therefore it is supposed to accept the rule of the group. And the group must deal fairly with the candidate in order to be able to match the expectations,” Manservisi said yesterday in an interview with daily Hürriyet.

Çavuşoğlu further said there were no “assets and liabilities” issues between Ankara and Brussels.

“We have no desire to turn this into a fight like ‘tit-for-tat’ either. We believe that the sincere dialogue environment that we have recently formed should be supported with concrete steps,” he added.