During a press conference at the European Parliament on Tuesday 8 November, Marie-Christine Vergiat (GUE/NGL, France) and Bodil Valero (Greens/EFA, Sweden) condemned the silence of the Council of the EU and European Commission regarding the situation in Turkey. "A simple denunciation is not enough", they said.
Vergiat described Erdogan's lack of power sharing as "serious and dramatic" and described the recent arrests of journalists and parliamentarians from the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) as "just the beginning of the escalation". Eyyup Doru, the HDP’s European representative, compared political development in Turkey with the "similar rise in fascism during the 1930s in Germany and Italy". "We have an imperative need for the EU!", he said.
According to Valero it is "high time to put a stop to the dialogue and negotiations (EU accession) with Turkey". "It is impossible to have a dialogue with a politician who is not a democrat", she said.
The leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), Guy Verhofstadt, from Belgium, shares this opinion and wants the European Commission to cease all dialogue with the Turkish government, until the HDP parliamentarians and journalists have been freed and until Erdogan has withdrawn his proposals for reintroducing the death penalty. Verhofstadt also urges the Commission and Council "not to give in to pressure from Mr Erdogan", particularly with regard to threats to suspend the EU-Turkey agreement on refugees.
Harms says "we clearly have interests in Turkey". The ideas expressed by the S&D Group have been more measured, as have those expressed by the co-leader of the Greens/EFA Group, Rebecca Harms (Germany), who travelled to Turkey last week and followed the most recent events there very closely. Harms said there is no question of suspending EU negotiations. "We clearly have interests in Turkey and we must, during the negotiations, take into account the many refugees, Kurds and other non-EU citizens. Turkey cannot just be summed up by Mr Erdogan alone", she said.
Manfred Weber (Germany), the leader of the Party of European Socialists (PES), argued that Europe must assert its own policy with regard to its Turkish neighbour. Speaking on Twitter he said that Europe should not depend on third parties when it involves migration.
These statements from the different political groups at the European Parliament come just when the European Commission is presenting its annual report on Wednesday 9 November on the follow-up to accession negotiations with Turkey. A commissioner said on Monday that "it would be unfortunate" to suspend accession negotiations with Turkey and added he was confident that the college of commissioners had the same position. According to this commissioner, continuing to negotiate would help to maintain a "lever" for change in Turkey, even though there were red lines, such as the reintroduction of the death penalty, which they would not be prepared to cross.
Speaking at the College of Bruges, the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, pointed out "with bitterness" that Turkey is becoming more distant from Europe every day and that "Turkey needs to tell us whether it really wants to become a member of the EU or not". He regretted that what the Turkish authorities were doing demonstrated their rejection of the conditions required for joining the EU.
In a press release, the EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Federica Mogherini, repeated on Tuesday that the EU had strong concerns regarding the possible reintroduction of the death penalty in Turkey and regarding the arrest of HDP party leaders. She again condemned the attempted coup perpetrated in the middle of last July and called on the Turkish authorities to respect the rule of law and fundamental freedoms. (Original version in French by Thomas Régnier and MB)