Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday expressed his readiness to resume the dialogue between Turkey and the European Union, as well as talks on modernizing the customs union and accession negotiations.
This was made known during a call to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, to whom Erdogan also said that it is necessary to strengthen relations between the two countries, while they also discussed the war in Ukraine, according to the Anatolia news agency.
In order to strengthen their bilateral relationship, the Turkish leader asked Scholz to return Germany to «its neutral position» in the framework of Turkish-Greek diplomatic ties, referring to his recent statements, in which he defended the sovereignty of Athens against «Turkish attacks».
Scholz assured, after a meeting with the Prime Minister of the Hellenic country, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, that it was not «acceptable» for one NATO partner to question another, a clear allusion to the dispute the two countries share in the eastern Mediterranean.
Although the situation in the eastern Mediterranean has improved in recent months and the EU’s diagnosis of Turkey’s attitude is positive, leaders continue to express misgivings about the Cyprus situation and Turkey’s internal rule of law issues.
The EU-27 have previously focused on the settlement of the Cyprus conflict and regretted that the UN-sponsored contacts in Geneva have not served to restart negotiations. They also identified the fundamental rights situation as a «major concern» in bilateral relations.
Among the most recent disagreements, the European Union expressed its concern in October about the recent law passed in Turkey against disinformation, which provides for prison sentences of up to three years for the dissemination of «false news».
Turkey was named an official EU candidate in 1999, but membership negotiations are frozen. Last month, a European Commission report criticized Ankara for not moving toward its goal of joining the bloc, citing «serious deficiencies in the functioning of democratic institutions,» DPA has recalled.
