On Friday 12 January, Turkey's Foreign Affairs Minister Ömer Çelik warned that his country would not accept a "special partnership" with the EU, as proposed by German politicians and the Bulgarian foreign affairs minister (see EUROPE 11934).
"If we are offered a special partnership, we will not even take it into account and we will simply reject it", he told news channel Habertürk, as quoted by Anadolu Agency. "No one can offer Turkey a second-class status in its relations with the EU", he added.
Çelik also rounded upon his main interlocutor in Brussels, Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn. "Although he's the European enlargement commissioner, he wants to reduce relations between Turkey and the EU", Çelik stated.
The planned coalition between the CDU and SPD in Germany rules out the opening of new EU accession negotiation chapters for Turkey or the closure of those that are open. It also rules out visa liberalisation and the modernisation of the customs union agreement, due to the state of "democracy, rule of law and human rights" in the country.
MEPs call for release of two journalists. On 12 January, the Turkey-European Parliament forum criticised the refusal to release journalists Mehmet Altan and Şahin Alpay despite a decision of the Turkish Constitutional Court calling for their immediate release as it considered their provisional detention had violated their right to the freedom of expression. The Court's decision "constitutes (...) a vital step to improve the media freedom and freedom of expression in Turkey", according to a press release from this group of 60 parliamentarians from the European Parliament's main political groups. "However, we strongly criticise the local courts refusal to follow the Constitutional Court's ruling to release the journalists and we call on them to implement the Constitutional Court ruling immediately. If the lower courts do not respect the decision of the Turkish Constitutional Court it will result in a further deterioration of Turkey's constitutional crisis and the erosion of rule of law and the separation of powers", the forum stated. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)