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China-Turkey ties deepen: Is this finally the end of Turkey's bid to join the EU?

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China-Turkey ties deepen: Is this finally the end of Turkey's bid to join the EU?
TURKEY has been in a bid to join the European Union for decades. But with progress stalled and hopes of accession fading, is the nation finally turning its back on the bloc and facing allies in the East?
By KATE WHITFIELD
PUBLISHED: 09:55, Tue, Jun 22, 2021

522


Turkey was officially recognised as a candidate for membership of the European Union in 1999, with negotiations beginning in 2005. But since 2016, negotiations have stalled, with accusations of human rights violations against Turkey and the implementation of laws that went against EU directives playing a role.

In 2018, France's Emmanuel Macron said it was time to stop pretending that Turkey had any chance of joining the EU anymore.

And in 2020, the EU Commission said the bid for membership was evaporating, citing “excessively” centralised presidential power for deteriorating conditions in freedom of speech, prisons and the central bank.

A statement from the Commission said: "The EU’s serious concerns on continued negative developments in the rule of law, fundamental rights and the judiciary have not been credibly addressed by Turkey.

“Turkey’s accession negotiations have effectively come to a standstill."

Now, it appears Turkey is beginning to face away from the EU and focus on building ties in the East, a sign the nation might be ready to give up its bid to join the bloc.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Azerbaijan last week, after Turkey’s military advisers, advanced drones and mercenaries provided crucial backing in the Azeri victory over Armenia in last year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh.

In Shusha, a city retaken by Azerbaijan in the conflict, the Turkish leader promoted a plan to build a rail link from south-western Azerbaijan to its exclave, the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, which has been cut off by Armenia since the 1990s.

Mr Erdogan said: "With the implementation of this project, a new middle corridor will be opened that everyone can benefit from, from East to West."

Mr Erdogan’s comment suggests it may also serve as a starting point to revive Turkey’s proposed Middle Corridor leg of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to revive the Silk Roads.

The proposed new railway would boost the economy of Nakhchivan and provide Turkey with a direct connection to the Caspian Basin that, according to some Turkish analysts, could also be used by China.

There are also signs of China beginning to show more willingness to cooperate in the region.

Late in 2020, trains from Turkey arrived in China via the Kars-Tbilisi-Baku line for the first time and the first freight train from Turkey arrived in China via the Trans-Caspian corridor.

Now China looks set to become a major investor in the financially troubled Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge and its connecting roads, and has offered to invest billions in the proposed Istanbul canal.

Looking to encourage greater Chinese investment amid a long-running economic crisis, Turkish officials have in recent years mostly refrained from commenting on Beijing’s reported human rights violations and persecution in Xinjiang province.

This has been particularly noted, as Turkey has a strong ethnic affinity to the Uyghur Muslims in the region.

And it appears to have paid off - just weeks after Turkey approved a new extradition treaty with China in May 2019, Beijing provided a $1billion cash infusion, its largest ever.

And last week, Mr Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul on June 13 that his country had signed a new $3.6-billion swap agreement with China, increasing the limit on their existing currency arrangement to $6billion.

Mr Erdogan said: "We made a very important agreement recently with China, which is very important and one of our biggest trade partners."

Turkey was also one of the first countries to validate the Chinese coronavirus vaccine, receiving an initial 6.5 million doses.

The nation also refused to bow to US pressure to ban Huawei from its telecommunications programme.

 
China-Turkey ties deepen: Is this finally the end of Turkey's bid to join the EU?
TURKEY has been in a bid to join the European Union for decades. But with progress stalled and hopes of accession fading, is the nation finally turning its back on the bloc and facing allies in the East?
By KATE WHITFIELD
PUBLISHED: 09:55, Tue, Jun 22, 2021

522


Turkey was officially recognised as a candidate for membership of the European Union in 1999, with negotiations beginning in 2005. But since 2016, negotiations have stalled, with accusations of human rights violations against Turkey and the implementation of laws that went against EU directives playing a role.

In 2018, France's Emmanuel Macron said it was time to stop pretending that Turkey had any chance of joining the EU anymore.

And in 2020, the EU Commission said the bid for membership was evaporating, citing “excessively” centralised presidential power for deteriorating conditions in freedom of speech, prisons and the central bank.

A statement from the Commission said: "The EU’s serious concerns on continued negative developments in the rule of law, fundamental rights and the judiciary have not been credibly addressed by Turkey.

“Turkey’s accession negotiations have effectively come to a standstill."

Now, it appears Turkey is beginning to face away from the EU and focus on building ties in the East, a sign the nation might be ready to give up its bid to join the bloc.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Azerbaijan last week, after Turkey’s military advisers, advanced drones and mercenaries provided crucial backing in the Azeri victory over Armenia in last year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh.

In Shusha, a city retaken by Azerbaijan in the conflict, the Turkish leader promoted a plan to build a rail link from south-western Azerbaijan to its exclave, the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, which has been cut off by Armenia since the 1990s.

Mr Erdogan said: "With the implementation of this project, a new middle corridor will be opened that everyone can benefit from, from East to West."

Mr Erdogan’s comment suggests it may also serve as a starting point to revive Turkey’s proposed Middle Corridor leg of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to revive the Silk Roads.

The proposed new railway would boost the economy of Nakhchivan and provide Turkey with a direct connection to the Caspian Basin that, according to some Turkish analysts, could also be used by China.

There are also signs of China beginning to show more willingness to cooperate in the region.

Late in 2020, trains from Turkey arrived in China via the Kars-Tbilisi-Baku line for the first time and the first freight train from Turkey arrived in China via the Trans-Caspian corridor.

Now China looks set to become a major investor in the financially troubled Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge and its connecting roads, and has offered to invest billions in the proposed Istanbul canal.

Looking to encourage greater Chinese investment amid a long-running economic crisis, Turkish officials have in recent years mostly refrained from commenting on Beijing’s reported human rights violations and persecution in Xinjiang province.

This has been particularly noted, as Turkey has a strong ethnic affinity to the Uyghur Muslims in the region.

And it appears to have paid off - just weeks after Turkey approved a new extradition treaty with China in May 2019, Beijing provided a $1billion cash infusion, its largest ever.

And last week, Mr Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul on June 13 that his country had signed a new $3.6-billion swap agreement with China, increasing the limit on their existing currency arrangement to $6billion.

Mr Erdogan said: "We made a very important agreement recently with China, which is very important and one of our biggest trade partners."

Turkey was also one of the first countries to validate the Chinese coronavirus vaccine, receiving an initial 6.5 million doses.

The nation also refused to bow to US pressure to ban Huawei from its telecommunications programme.


This won't be popular among the public since the Uighur issue is still alive. I have met Uighur refugees in Turkey trying to live hand to mouth, and it breaks my heart honestly.
 
Look at this map ,the most powerful block of world in future View attachment 755922

If China were to finance a underground train link under the Suez Canal - it would have a land brdige to the whole of Africa.. much cheaper to send things around on trains than ships, especially raw materials etc.
 
This won't be popular among the public since the Uighur issue is still alive. I have met Uighur refugees in Turkey trying to live hand to mouth, and it breaks my heart honestly.

Some of these refugees were deceived to leave the country, and some thought that they would live better abroad. Suppose that these people do not include terrorists and separatists.

In fact, not only the Uyghurs, but many Hans also want to leave China to go to the West and live the life they expect. In order to achieve their goals, they did not hesitate to fabricate stories about their persecution in China.

However, the new life may not be as good as expected, but China is developing better and better, especially Xinjiang has undergone tremendous changes, and even the villages near the desert have also stepped into modernization.
 
Each and every nation currently allied to the 5 eyes/Nato would inevitably re-align towards the Eastern Bloc within the next 2 decades.
Eg Saudi, Turkey, Korea, Singapore, Brazil, Argentina, UAE.
Because the 5Eyes/Nato only want you as a camp follower, they don't want you to be equal nor supersede them. Hence they will go out of their way to deny you highend technology or economic success.
Eastern cultures allow you to be equals, or even supersede them if you have it in you. Thus they have no problems sharing technology and prosperity...
People are not fools, they can see where their interest lies
 
Some of these refugees were deceived to leave the country, and some thought that they would live better abroad. Suppose that these people do not include terrorists and separatists.

In fact, not only the Uyghurs, but many Hans also want to leave China to go to the West and live the life they expect. In order to achieve their goals, they did not hesitate to fabricate stories about their persecution in China.

However, the new life may not be as good as expected, but China is developing better and better, especially Xinjiang has undergone tremendous changes, and even the villages near the desert have also stepped into modernization.

I don't think they would stop in Turkey. These were refugees, not economic migrants.
 
SCO is the new Economic Forum for Asian , Euro Asian Nation
New financial model will emerge ,from SCO
 
True, if Turkey were not a Muslim country, she could've been allowed to join EU long time ago.
Bosnia is a Muslim dominated country and will become the next to join the EU. The key issue is Turkey is led by Erdogan, a Turkish Islamist mullah. He burns the bridges. He hates the West.
 
Bosnia is a Muslim dominated country and will become the next to join the EU. The key issue is Turkey is led by Erdogan, a Turkish Islamist mullah. He burns the bridges. He hates the West.

Are you sure about that?


lbania
Albania is no closer to joining the EU. Its leaders might prefer it that way
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By Orlando Crowcroft & Dena Ristani • Updated: 23/04/2021
Supporters of the Socialist Movement for Integration (LSI) hold flares during a rally of their party in Tirana, Albania, Thursday, April 22, 2021.

Supporters of the Socialist Movement for Integration (LSI) hold flares during a rally of their party in Tirana, Albania, Thursday, April 22, 2021. - Copyright Uncredited/Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
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It is fair to say that there is little love lost between Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and his main opponent in this Sunday’s election, Lulzim Basha.
Basha has long called for Rama to resign over corruption claims while his MPs even withdrew from parliament in 2019 over allegations of vote-rigging. Meanwhile, opposition demonstrations got so out of control that at one point protesters tried to break into Rama’s office.
Polls see the two men neck-and-neck ahead of the election on Sunday, although Rama is confident that his Socialist Party will secure a landslide win. That would see Rama, a former painter and basketball player, serve an unprecedented third term as leader of Albania.


But if there is one thing that Basha and Rama agree on - at least in public - it is Europe and forging ahead with Albania’s much-stalled negotiations to join the European bloc. Albania’s European future has been a key election issue in 2021, as it has been at every other national poll in recent years.
It is a no-brainer, politically, to put Europe at the forefront of debate in a country where a February 2020 poll found as many as 97% of Albanians in favour of EU accession.

“We might be the only country where you cannot find any political force, be it local or even in the margins of the political spectrum to be against the EU,” Gledis Gjipali, executive director of the European Movement in Albania, told Euronews.
But like elsewhere in the Western Balkans, Albania’s road to Europe has been long, winding, and studded with potholes. Achingly slow, it has been frustrated at every turn by both changing political realities in the region and, more recently, changes of heart in Brussels.

France’s Emmanuel Macron and the Netherlands’ Mark Rutte have epitomised Europe’s reluctance to open the books in recent years. In 2019, Macron blocked Albania and North Macedonia from moving forward with their membership bids.
Macron has his eye on his own re-election in 2022, and the challenge from the anti-EU extreme right under Marine Le Pen. He said reforming the EU was more important than enlarging it, and complained about the number of asylum seekers coming from Albania to France.
“How do I explain to my constituents that the country where most asylum seekers are coming from is Albania, yet many EU ministers believe that Albania is improving and that we should launch EU accession talks?” Macron said.
Albania's message to Europe: Send more carrots
The French president’s argument is that Europe needs to reform itself before admitting new members, and despite the singling out of Albania there are those in the country that agree. Not least, the EU needs to figure out how to deal with member states that ticked the democratic boxes when they joined only to gradually backslide once they were in, Gjipali said.
But backtracking by the EU when it comes to Albania and the wider Western Balkans is not a solution, Gjipali added. For all its failings and its slow pace, the path towards European integration has often been the sole driving force behind reform in the Western Balkans.
Without the EU carrot, political elites and authoritarian forces would only be emboldened.
“Unfinished business would not bring the so crucial stability and strong democratic values for the country. The EU power of attraction is the greatest driving force behind the reforms pursued in Albania and motivation to bear the costs of this process,” he said.
Indeed, politically the current malaise in Brussels has already benefited political elites, allowing them to blame Europe for Albania’s problems rather than the failure of successive governments in Tirana to pass sufficient reforms to tackle corruption, crime and the rule of law, analysts say.
Rama, speaking to Euronews Albania this week, that the country had fulfilled its duty when it comes to readiness for European Union membership and blamed the European Council and European Commission for the fact that it hasn’t been achieved during his eight years in power.
Visar Kryeziu/Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Albania's Socialist Party Leader Edi Rama reacts as he delivers his speech during a political rally in Albania's capital Tirana on Thursday, April 22, 2021.Visar Kryeziu/Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Privately, critics say, Albanian politicians may prefer the situation as it is. Opening negotiations would involve detailed, public inspection of every facet of Albania’s economy, government and institutions and could reveal skeletons that many would prefer remain hidden.
“Hiding behind the political issues and blockages keeping enlargement on hold takes the pressure off the government to deliver on reforms,” said Donika Emini, PhD candidate at the University of Westminster and a member of the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group.
The result of this has been that Albanians - and particularly the youth - have grown increasingly despondent about Europe and apathetic about politics in general, Alfonc Rakaj, an analyst, told Euronews. As elsewhere in the Western Balkans, it is Albania’s youth that - sick of waiting for life to improve at home - flock overseas to seek opportunity in Europe and beyond.
One of the reasons that the election on Sunday is still too close to call, he added, is because so many voters are tired of the same old faces: Rama has been in politics since 1998, Basha since 2005, and neither are considered to have brought the change that voters want to see, he said.
Meanwhile, Albanians look to their neighbours and see faster progress towards integration in increasingly anti-democratic countries like Serbia, while the prospects of Kosovo, Bosnia and Albania remain at a stalemate. It has not gone unnoticed that it is the countries of the Western Balkans with Muslim majorities - or at least sizable minorities - that have languished, he said.
“For some, the EU’s inability to absorb the region has anti-Islamic undertones [...], Rakaj said, “Albania has done more than Serbia, but is not even allowed to open negotiation talks.”

Is it because we're Muslims, Albania wonders
That has been particularly acute as far-right forces in countries such as France, the Netherlands and Germany have directly linked opposition to Albania joining the EU to fears of an influx of Muslim immigrants to European countries, as well as suggestions that Albania - being a Muslim-majority nation - has links to Turkey or other Muslim states.
“The main fear of the public elite in Tirana is the identification of Albania with the religious belief of the majority of its population, and, consequently, of being prejudiced as a bearer of Turkish influence or something similar,” Afrim Krasniqi, a former MP and executive director of the Institute for Political Studies, told Euronews.
“We do not see ourselves as an extension of whomever. We do not feel as such and we do not want to identify as such.”
As full membership of the European Union looks increasingly remote, at least in the short term, some have suggested that France and other nations opposed to enlargement could suggest a two-tier EU, with select countries given some of the benefits of membership and not others. This would not be a first choice, Krasniqi said, but it would be better than nothing.
“In essence, citizens see integration as access to free movement, to study, to work, to trade, and to the same standard of living and democracy - and if these are achieved in alternative formulas, it would be an acceptable solution for us,” he said.
Others believe that for the European Union to go back on what was promised as far back as 2003, when Albania was first identified as a potential candidate, and negate all the work that has been done in the country since could be another nail in the coffin for the EU.
Even if it takes several years, full membership is the only way forward for Albania.
“The EU backtracking on a promise and commitment made to Western Balkan countries - where most of them have made painful compromises even because of the prospect of joining EU - is damaging for our countries and for EU in itself,” said Gjipali, at the European Movement.
“In an every day more globalised world, the EU needs to be stronger, decided and less ambiguous to face the increasingly known and unknown challenges.”


 
Are you sure about that?


lbania
Albania is no closer to joining the EU. Its leaders might prefer it that way
Access to the comments Comments
By Orlando Crowcroft & Dena Ristani • Updated: 23/04/2021
Supporters of the Socialist Movement for Integration (LSI) hold flares during a rally of their party in Tirana, Albania, Thursday, April 22, 2021.

Supporters of the Socialist Movement for Integration (LSI) hold flares during a rally of their party in Tirana, Albania, Thursday, April 22, 2021. - Copyright Uncredited/Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
Share this article
Text size Aa Aa

It is fair to say that there is little love lost between Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and his main opponent in this Sunday’s election, Lulzim Basha.
Basha has long called for Rama to resign over corruption claims while his MPs even withdrew from parliament in 2019 over allegations of vote-rigging. Meanwhile, opposition demonstrations got so out of control that at one point protesters tried to break into Rama’s office.
Polls see the two men neck-and-neck ahead of the election on Sunday, although Rama is confident that his Socialist Party will secure a landslide win. That would see Rama, a former painter and basketball player, serve an unprecedented third term as leader of Albania.


But if there is one thing that Basha and Rama agree on - at least in public - it is Europe and forging ahead with Albania’s much-stalled negotiations to join the European bloc. Albania’s European future has been a key election issue in 2021, as it has been at every other national poll in recent years.
It is a no-brainer, politically, to put Europe at the forefront of debate in a country where a February 2020 poll found as many as 97% of Albanians in favour of EU accession.

“We might be the only country where you cannot find any political force, be it local or even in the margins of the political spectrum to be against the EU,” Gledis Gjipali, executive director of the European Movement in Albania, told Euronews.
But like elsewhere in the Western Balkans, Albania’s road to Europe has been long, winding, and studded with potholes. Achingly slow, it has been frustrated at every turn by both changing political realities in the region and, more recently, changes of heart in Brussels.

France’s Emmanuel Macron and the Netherlands’ Mark Rutte have epitomised Europe’s reluctance to open the books in recent years. In 2019, Macron blocked Albania and North Macedonia from moving forward with their membership bids.
Macron has his eye on his own re-election in 2022, and the challenge from the anti-EU extreme right under Marine Le Pen. He said reforming the EU was more important than enlarging it, and complained about the number of asylum seekers coming from Albania to France.
“How do I explain to my constituents that the country where most asylum seekers are coming from is Albania, yet many EU ministers believe that Albania is improving and that we should launch EU accession talks?” Macron said.
Albania's message to Europe: Send more carrots
The French president’s argument is that Europe needs to reform itself before admitting new members, and despite the singling out of Albania there are those in the country that agree. Not least, the EU needs to figure out how to deal with member states that ticked the democratic boxes when they joined only to gradually backslide once they were in, Gjipali said.
But backtracking by the EU when it comes to Albania and the wider Western Balkans is not a solution, Gjipali added. For all its failings and its slow pace, the path towards European integration has often been the sole driving force behind reform in the Western Balkans.
Without the EU carrot, political elites and authoritarian forces would only be emboldened.
“Unfinished business would not bring the so crucial stability and strong democratic values for the country. The EU power of attraction is the greatest driving force behind the reforms pursued in Albania and motivation to bear the costs of this process,” he said.
Indeed, politically the current malaise in Brussels has already benefited political elites, allowing them to blame Europe for Albania’s problems rather than the failure of successive governments in Tirana to pass sufficient reforms to tackle corruption, crime and the rule of law, analysts say.
Rama, speaking to Euronews Albania this week, that the country had fulfilled its duty when it comes to readiness for European Union membership and blamed the European Council and European Commission for the fact that it hasn’t been achieved during his eight years in power.
Visar Kryeziu/Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Albania's Socialist Party Leader Edi Rama reacts as he delivers his speech during a political rally in Albania's capital Tirana on Thursday, April 22, 2021.Visar Kryeziu/Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Privately, critics say, Albanian politicians may prefer the situation as it is. Opening negotiations would involve detailed, public inspection of every facet of Albania’s economy, government and institutions and could reveal skeletons that many would prefer remain hidden.
“Hiding behind the political issues and blockages keeping enlargement on hold takes the pressure off the government to deliver on reforms,” said Donika Emini, PhD candidate at the University of Westminster and a member of the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group.
The result of this has been that Albanians - and particularly the youth - have grown increasingly despondent about Europe and apathetic about politics in general, Alfonc Rakaj, an analyst, told Euronews. As elsewhere in the Western Balkans, it is Albania’s youth that - sick of waiting for life to improve at home - flock overseas to seek opportunity in Europe and beyond.
One of the reasons that the election on Sunday is still too close to call, he added, is because so many voters are tired of the same old faces: Rama has been in politics since 1998, Basha since 2005, and neither are considered to have brought the change that voters want to see, he said.
Meanwhile, Albanians look to their neighbours and see faster progress towards integration in increasingly anti-democratic countries like Serbia, while the prospects of Kosovo, Bosnia and Albania remain at a stalemate. It has not gone unnoticed that it is the countries of the Western Balkans with Muslim majorities - or at least sizable minorities - that have languished, he said.
“For some, the EU’s inability to absorb the region has anti-Islamic undertones [...], Rakaj said, “Albania has done more than Serbia, but is not even allowed to open negotiation talks.”

Is it because we're Muslims, Albania wonders
That has been particularly acute as far-right forces in countries such as France, the Netherlands and Germany have directly linked opposition to Albania joining the EU to fears of an influx of Muslim immigrants to European countries, as well as suggestions that Albania - being a Muslim-majority nation - has links to Turkey or other Muslim states.
“The main fear of the public elite in Tirana is the identification of Albania with the religious belief of the majority of its population, and, consequently, of being prejudiced as a bearer of Turkish influence or something similar,” Afrim Krasniqi, a former MP and executive director of the Institute for Political Studies, told Euronews.
“We do not see ourselves as an extension of whomever. We do not feel as such and we do not want to identify as such.”
As full membership of the European Union looks increasingly remote, at least in the short term, some have suggested that France and other nations opposed to enlargement could suggest a two-tier EU, with select countries given some of the benefits of membership and not others. This would not be a first choice, Krasniqi said, but it would be better than nothing.
“In essence, citizens see integration as access to free movement, to study, to work, to trade, and to the same standard of living and democracy - and if these are achieved in alternative formulas, it would be an acceptable solution for us,” he said.
Others believe that for the European Union to go back on what was promised as far back as 2003, when Albania was first identified as a potential candidate, and negate all the work that has been done in the country since could be another nail in the coffin for the EU.
Even if it takes several years, full membership is the only way forward for Albania.
“The EU backtracking on a promise and commitment made to Western Balkan countries - where most of them have made painful compromises even because of the prospect of joining EU - is damaging for our countries and for EU in itself,” said Gjipali, at the European Movement.
“In an every day more globalised world, the EU needs to be stronger, decided and less ambiguous to face the increasingly known and unknown challenges.”


Bosnia and Albania are two different countries.
They are Muslim countries however they differ like day and night. It’s like liberal Tunesia and fanatics Iran.
 

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