THE SPIRIT OF TIME IN EU IS ADDRESSING TURKEY

In the article published in the "Guest Author's Corner" of the daily newspaper Milliyet, Minister for EU Affairs and Chief negotiator Egemen Bagis evaluated Turkey's EU membership process.

Bagis stated that each week an article about the EU, written by him or by the Secretary General for EU Affairs Volkan Bozkir, would be published in a different newspaper and he also said:

It is an exemplary success story of Turkey's recent history that Turkey's uneven EU process that lasted for half a century settled on a sound ground with the Brussels Summit on 17 December 2004 and that the accession negotiations started in 2005.

When we came to power in 2002, we opened a new page in the European Union process and we identified the EU membership as Turkey's primary target and we laid down our road map. As a result of the implementation with determination of this road map which is also a democracy and development package, the European Union became obliged to give a negotiation date to Turkey.

While the accession negotiations are continuing, Turkey's getting ahead of many European Union countries in terms of both democratic standards and development level and becoming Europe's 6th largest economy are completely a manifestation of our government's determination. It is a reality that there are preconceptions about Turkey in the European Union circles and in the European public opinion and that sometimes these preconceptions even disrupt the ongoing process in a way incompatible with the letter and spirit of the negotiations. This is the reason why negotiations over 18 Chapters are blocked at the moment.

However, what is essential for us is that whatever the circumstances are, Turkey attains the European Union standards.

Today, the EU is the best address for the level of contemporary civilizations implied by Ataturk. All other addresses apart from this are blind alleys. Now, with our constitutional amendment package consisting of 30 articles, we are at the edge of attaining those standards. We have already stated the fact that, in terms of our EU negotiation process, each article of this package is as important as opening a chapter in the EU negotiation process and that it would seriously accelerate the process.

This article is being translated...