EU painting terror group as NGO is very wrong: Turkey

Omer Celik, Turkey’s EU minister did not mince his words, accusing the EU as being biased and failing to treat Turkey fairly.

Turkey's envoy to the EU, Omer Celik, has strongly criticised the latest report by the EU on Turkey.
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Turkey's envoy to the EU, Omer Celik, has strongly criticised the latest report by the EU on Turkey.

Turkey blasted the EU on Wednesday for painting the Fetullah Terror Organization (FETO) – the group behind a defeated July 2016 coup – as an “innocent NGO.”

"It's is extremely wrong to mention FETO as an innocent non-governmental organisation," Omer Celik, Turkey’s EU minister, said, speaking at a news conference in the capital Ankara.

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His remarks come a day after the European Commission released a report on the state of Turkey’s EU accession bid, after a one-and-a-half-year hiatus since the last report.

While calling the July 2016 defeated coup attempt, in which more than 250 people were killed and another 2,200 injured, "a traumatic period in Turkey," the report’s description of FETO is unchanged from the November 2016 report, which called the terrorist group the "Gulen movement."

Celik also accused the EU of being biased and not objective towards Turkey.

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"Leaving Turkey's member country perspective aside and only [focusing on] co-operation on other issues, going back to neighbourhood policy, is not acceptable," Celik said.

Celik charged that the EU report doesn't present fair, objective, criticisms with a positive future perspective.

"It is a report which has no vision and content, which is far from understanding the intensity, dimensions and perspective of relations, and it also lags behind developments," he said.

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