NasdaqOf course this move is politically and financially motivated- It's part of the war against Turkey.Surely the US okayed this move.
BRUSSELS—The European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to temporarily freeze talks on Turkey's bid to join the European Union on Thursday, citing deteriorating human rights and democratic standards under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's rule.
The vote, which was nonbinding, underscores a deep slide in relations between the EU and Turkey and will further drain energy from accession talks that have already dragged on with limited progress for more than a decade.
EU lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in favor of the resolution which called for the freeze in talks in response to the"disproportionate repressive measures" that lawmakers said Turkish authorities have taken since July's failed military coup.
In whose opinion are these moves repressive? The coup plotters opinion?Recall the EU was non supportive of Turkey after the coup attempt fail? Just like the US.
In recent months, some senior European officials have warned it would be a diplomatic blunder to end the accession talks, saying it would cause a needless fresh crisis between Brussels and Ankara and blunt pressures for reform within Turkey.
However, others believe that ending the talks could allow the EU and Turkey to refocus ties on areas of real mutual interest and end the constant back-and-forth over Turkey's record in moving closer to EU rules and standards.
While only one EU member state, Austria, has formally proposed that the membership talks should be suspended, in recent weeks there has been growing frustration with Mr. Erdogan in Brussels, Berlin and other capitals and an acknowledgment that membership negotiations were headed nowhere.
Many EU countries have, from the start of talks in 2005, been deeply skeptical about Turkey joining the bloc. However, membership for Turkey was once pushed strongly by the likes of the U.K. and the U.S.
In recent months, Mr. Erdogan and Turkish officials have suggested they could walk away from the discussions. Ankara has worked to improve ties with Russia and Middle Eastern neighbors in that time.
Regarding my comment about the coup plotters (EU/US) judging Turkeys alleged disproportionate measures......... Euractiv The paragraph below is mostly hearsay. The numbers are likely be accurate but anything else is unverifiable. It's mostly written to create empathyI'll underline the parts I believe to be factual statements
They represent 40 Turkish officers from NATO HQ in Brussels, all sacked peremptorily in September. Overall, 700 out of a pool assigned to NATO of 900 officers are purged or jailed. They are, or were, the cream of the Turkish armed forces, including many post-graduates from the US Naval School in Monterey, California.
They want to talk about their plight. They are victims of President Erdoğan’s purge. If they go home (as some colleagues did) they will be arrested and imprisoned without hope of a fair trial. Most are applying for political asylum in Belgium.Their properties in Turkey are sequestrated, and members of their families at home, including mothers, have been interrogated. All deny complicity in the July putsch. They are incriminated, they say, because they are Western and intellectual.They are typical of a new Western-oriented class of military officer that has sought escape from an Ottoman past that was littered with plots, coups, scandals, corruption, torture, and murder. But old habits die hard. “Even Mustafa Kemal [Ataturk] was a ‘putsch-ist’”, my companions remind me proudly.
The military undermined
Erdoğan’s earlier strikes against the overweening power of the Kemalist establishment are not resented by the younger officers. They are loyal to the armed forces but not uncritical.
They know that Turkey’s military has enjoyed great privileges since the foundation of the republic in 1923. ( True) The military budget is beyond the scrutiny of the Turkish Grand National Assembly. (True)A constant battle between Turkey’s civilian and military echelon has been played out in the secretive national security council.
Bastion of secularism, the military itself has been consumed with inter-service and inter-generational rivalry, and many generals have been enriched by running unimpeded a powerful military industrial complex (True)
NATO destabilised
Turkey joined NATO (with Greece) as long ago as 1952. For years, in good times and bad, the only reliable interlocutors with Turkey’s vast armed forces have been the US military.
Erdoğan alleges that the CIA, somehow inspired by Fethullah Gülen from his unlikely hideout in Pennsylvania, was behind the putsch. Whatever the truth, it is difficult to believe that the Americans had no knowledge of the affair in advance.(obviously TRUE)
So today, at least under President Obama, the US military are not talking to the new AKP party interlopers (interesting and telling word!) at NATO in Brussels or SHAPE in Mons.
Interlopers defined: a person/s who becomes involved in a place or situation where they are not wanted or are considered not to belong. The US military considers Turkey's elected government and it's representatives unwanted and unbelonging persons..
In effect, NATO has ceased to operate reliably on its south-eastern flank. (True) The collective security of the West now stops at Edirne, in Thrace. (surely the way the NATO tyranny looks at it)
Recall this post from more then two years ago??November 14/2014: Kurdistan. NATO’s new Southern Flank?
" If all goes well for NATO, Israel and the Kurds. Turkey will be supplanted as NATO’s Southern Flank. It seems to be just a matter of time.....I hold the opinion that Turkish leadership has become aware of what looks to be it’s impending betrayal"
Stoltenberg the player
It is little short of astonishing, therefore, that Jens Stoltenberg, NATO secretary general, told a NATO conference in Istanbul on Monday, in front of Erdoğan, that Turkey remains a steadfast ally.
Stoltenberg was lying. It's just part of the 'game' for him.