Egemen Bağış reacted to Hague’s recommendations

Former Foreign Affairs Minister of Britain William Hague proposed to form a new kind of EU membership status for Turkey in his article published in Telegraph, one of the prestigiousnewspapers in the UK.

Today, Telegraph published Egemen Bağış’s article which reacts to Hague’s proposal, on the same day the UK-Turkey forum known as “Sweet Talk” was held.

In his article, Egemen Bağış voiced Turkey’s reaction to Hague’s approach resembling it to the “privileged partnership” model proposed by Sarkozy and Merkel before.

Insult to my country

Those points are covered in Bağış’s article published in the Telegraph:

Mr. Hague’s idea for a new kind of EU membership for Turkey evokes the proposals made before by France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel. As Turkey’s former European Affairs Minister and Chief Negotiator I took this offer (which has no basis) as an insult to my country.

It is also ironic that such a proposal is made by Mr. Hague, as his country was initially rejected by the European Economic Community.

French General de Gaulle accused the UK with bearing a deep enmity to Europe’s reconstruction and stressed that the UK shall go through a “radical transformation” before becoming a member to the European Economic Community. 

Today, a country can become a candidate country, anegotiator country or a member country to the European Unionin accordance with the EU acquis. Turkey holds the record for being a candidate and accession country to the EU for the longest period of time.

However, afair comparison with some of the new member states of the EU shows that Turkey is already prepared for the EU membership.

A fool’s errand

Egemen Bağış stated that the suggestion for a status that does not exist in the EU acquis is an insult on Turkey’s intellect. Turkey may also consider available legal options if the authorities of the UK, which goes to referendum in June for having doubts about its EU membership, enable the legislative changes for indecisive countries and switch to the new status instead of producing formulas for Turkey.It is a fool’s errand to discuss the things that are not happened yet.