Ted Malloch, the US President’s Donald Trump’s pick for EU ambassador has announced that Turkey will never become an EU member. He added that the EU had already given its decision about Ankara.
According to Turkish journalist Beril Dedeoglu, who wrote a column in Daily Sabah, Ted Malloc has also told that everybody knew about it in Washington – since at least 20 years – since at least 20 years.
We do not yet know why someone who is supposed to represent US interests in Brussels felt the urge to give his opinion on the future of EU-Turkey relations; he should have been more focused on US-EU relations instead. Anyway, he did not tell when exactly the EU had decided to never let Turkey in. Perhaps he will provide more details once he takes on the job. As he said the US knew about it for the last 20 years, the EU must have decided somewhere around 1997.
1997 is not ancient history and many people perfectly remember what happened that year: During a summit in Luxembourg in December 1997, the EU had decided that Turkey was eligible to become a candidate country, but it was not yet ready. However, despite the ongoing division, the Republic of Cyprus had been given the candidate status, as if its government was representing the entire island. So in 1997, the EU did not want Turkey, indeed.
This is not the end of story, however. Just two years later, in 1999, European leaders gathered in Helsinki had accepted to grant Turkey the candidate status. The point is, nothing had really changed in Turkey between 1997 and 1999. If Turkey was not ready in 1997, it probably wasn’t ready in 1999 either. The EU had changed its mind for some reason, however, and Turkey had been officially declared a candidate country, the newspaper added.
