Turkish deputy PM says Brexit has ‘opened Pandora’s box’

“You don’t want to open Pandora’s box... Oh but it has been... Brexit,” Şimşek tweeted on June 24, hours after polls showed that the U.K. had voted in favor of leaving the 28-nation bloc. 

Meanwhile another deputy prime minister, Nurettin Canikli, posted on Twitter that Britain choosing to leave the EU marked the beginning of the “fragmentation” of the union. 

“The fragmentation process of the EU has started. Britain is the first to abandon ship,” Canikli wrote on June 24. 

Some 52 percent of the British electorate voted to leave the EU, while 48 percent voted to stay. 

British Prime Minister David Cameron, after the announcement of the results, said he would step down in October. 

The Brexit campaign and the rise of Europe’s populist right have further dented Turkish hopes of ever joining the EU. Ankara was already frustrated about the slow pace of its own decades-long negotiations to join the bloc.