WE WILL NOT GIVE UP OUR EU BID FOR OUTSIDE REASONS

Delivering a speech at the opening of the regional informational meeting held in Elazig as part of the project called "Municipalities are preparing for the EU", Minister for EU Affairs and Chief Negotiator Egemen Bagis said, "Efforts to get Turkey to throw in the towel, which the late Ozal had foreseen, are at the top of the list at the moment. Then would we become furious at these and drop the EU issue from our agenda? Definitely not. We won't step back from our cause for any outside reason."

Mentioning the EU process in the meeting held at a hotel in Elazig in cooperation of the Secretariat General for EU Affairs and Turkish Union of Municipalities, Bagis said, "We have now opened 13 out of 33 chapters" and continued to say,

"There are political obstacles in 17 out of 20 chapters in the process. 8 of which are Council decisions and 6 of which are one-sided declarations of the Greek Cypriot part. These have become politically unopenable because of some veto threats posed by others. Efforts to 'get Turkey to throw in the towel', which the late Ozal had foreseen, are at the top of the list at the moment. Then would we become furious at these and drop the EU issue from our agenda? Definitely not. There is a nice saying in Anatolia, 'One doesn't step back from his cause for outside reasons.'

We started this way in order to raise the standards of our people and we will work together to this end. When we look back and evaluate what has been achieved, we observe how right an approach our determination was."