Germany faces opposition on cutting EU ties with Turkey

Turkey remains a vital partner of the European Union (EU) and ties should be maintained even if the country had taken a worrying turn of late, French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview published on Thursday.

Macron’s comments followed those made by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel during campaigning for the upcoming parliamentary elections on September 24.

Merkel, who is running for a fourth term, came under enormous pressure from her rivals recently and promised on Tuesday to raise the possibility of suspending or ending Turkey’s EU membership talks in discussions with her counterparts.

In an interview with Greece's Kathimerini newspaper, Macron said Turkey had through its own actions distanced itself from the EU. 

This, he said, could negatively impact existing agreements with the EU such as the existing customs union agreement between Turkey and the EU.

"But I want to avoid a split because it's a vital partner in many crises we all face, notably the immigration challenge and the terrorist threat."

Turkey and the EU signed a refugee deal in 2015 to halt the influx of refugees that come from war-torn countries such as Syria and Iraq and Macron said the deal "produces results."

Estonian Foreign Minister Sven Mikser, whose country currently holds the rotating six-month presidency of the Council of the European Union, criticised German politicians on Wednesday for making EU-Turkey ties a major topic of their political campaign. 

“All decisions about the future of EU-Turkey ties should be considered very carefully, and they should not be taken during election campaigning,” he said.

In an interview with a German public radio, Deutschlandfunk, Mikser also said internal politics should not harm the future of EU and that it should be considered a "strategic partnership” not subject to elections.

European Parliament president, Antonio Tajani, also opposed Merkel’s comments saying that the EU should keep the door to dialogue open.

Speaking to news website Politico, Tajani said although Turkey's ambitions of joining the EU currently seemed further away than ever before, "we cannot close the chapter.”

"We need to keep on talking and push Turkey to change its line."

Finland's Foreign Minister Timo Soini also joined the fray on Thursday, saying that he was against cutting EU membership.

Soini, arriving in Brussels for talks on the matter with the other foreign ministers from the bloc, said: "It's always useful to have a dialogue. We know there are problems with human rights in Turkey but I am not in favour of cutting the negotiations."

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan commented on German politicians’ statements on Wednesday, saying that the EU should make a decision on Turkey's membership bid soon.

Erdogan said that Turkey had fulfilled its requirements for admission into the EU and the country expects the bloc to do their part.

“However, it is obviously intolerable that the European Union, which fails to fulfill its promises to our country, starts accusing us,” said Erdogan, adding that Turkey will continue to pursue its EU membership goal.

Turkey has for some time been seeking to upgrade the current custom union with the EU that allows goods to travel between the two entities without any customs restrictions.

The agreement does not cover essential economic areas such as agriculture, services or public procurement. Some of these are covered by bilateral agreements with individual EU countries.

Turkish Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci said on Thursday that Germany has no right to block a planned update of Turkey's customs union with the EU.

Speaking to reporters in Ankara, Zeybekci said there were no problems in Turkey's accession negotiations with the EU and that the process continued.

Deteriorating ties

Turkey's ties with Germany and several other EU states have deteriorated sharply in the last 12 months.

A major point of the dispute has been the barring of Turkish politicians from holding campaign rallies in EU countries ahead of a referendum in April this year that saw Turkey move from a parliamentary to a presidential system of governance. Also in contention is Germany's decision to allow asylum applications for people allegedly involved in the July 2016 coup attempt.

Turkey says it has sent Germany an extradition request for one of the main suspects it says was behind the coup attempt when members of the military on July 15 attempted to overthrow the government and Erdogan's presidency. Almost 250 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the attempted putsch and more than 2,000 were wounded.

Germany's Spiegel magazine on Saturday reported that Germany had rejected a formal request from Turkey to freeze assets of members of the network of US-based Fetullah Gulen, accused by Ankara of orchestrating the coup attempt, a charge Gulen denies.

Turkey has also restricted access to German parliamentarians seeking to visit German troops at the Incirlik airbase in southern Turkey, leading Berlin to announce it was moving those forces out of Turkey. It has also detained several German nationals, including journalist Deniz Yucel.