Berlin: Turkey must meet EU terms

German Chancellor Merkel displays cautious optimism during meeting with visiting Turkish PM

Photo: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (l) and German Chancellor Angela Merkel at a joint press conference in Berlin yesterday.

By Geir Moulson - The Associated Press

BERLIN - Turkey’s prime minister expressed confidence yesterday that Germany will continue supporting his country’s efforts to join the European Union under Chancellor Angela Merkel, a longtime opponent of its bid.

Merkel underlined her support for ongoing membership talks, but stressed that “all criteria naturally must be fulfilled” before Turkey can join.

Conservative leader Merkel opposed EU membership for Turkey before last year’s election. However, her coalition partner, predecessor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrats, supports Ankara’s bid. Merkel’s government supports the country’s ongoing membership talks.

“Germany has always supported us,” Erdogan told reporters after meeting Merkel. “I am confident that Germany will also support us in the future.”

Enthusiasm for further expansion of the 25-nation EU is low among existing members, and the prospect of relatively poor and predominantly Muslim Turkey joining is viewed with suspicion by many Europeans. Germany is home to a large Turkish minority.

“There are and were in my party certainly skeptical views on the question of full membership for Turkey,” Merkel said. “But we have always said that, as a government, we... abide in continuity by what the previous government agreed.”

“We will follow these membership talks in such a way that all criteria naturally must be fulfilled, and certainly there will be tough negotiations in some places, but these talks continue,” she said.

Turkey began EU talks in October, shortly before Merkel took office. They are expected to take years, and German conservatives stress that the outcome is open.

“We cannot say definitively today whether Turkey will succeed in ‘Europeanizing’ itself to the extent that, in the end, it will be become a member of the European Union as a European country,” Ruprecht Polenz, the head of Parliament’s foreign affairs committee and a member of Merkel’s Christian Democrats, told WDR radio yesterday. “But we want to, and should, help it to be as successful as possible on this road.”

Merkel and Erdogan also attended a German-Turkish economic conference, and the chancellor said she will travel to Turkey in October with an industry delegation.