EU minister replies to New York Times: Do not relate protests with EU membership

Turkey's EU Minister and Chief Negotiator Egemen Bagis said it was extremely wrong to relate the protests with Turkey's EU process referring to New York Times article. Bagis said he has written a letter to  New York Times in response to a story claiming that Turkey broke away from itsEU membership process. "On the one hand I emphasized that the protests in our country were just like the ones in every democratic country and a sign of the existence of civil society, and on the other hand I laid stress on our decisiveness about EU membership. It is extremely wrong to relate the protests with our EU process," said Bagis. New York Times published an op-ed article titled "Turkey’s EU Bid" on June 24. “Just days after your editorial ‘Turkey undermines its bid to join the EU' (June 26), the EU decided to resume talks with Turkey by opening the Regional Policy Chapter to negotiations. We welcome this decision. Yet criticism by some European officials on issues related to human rights, democracy and rule of law are not very convincing at a time when those issues cannot be discussed under negotiations due to the lack of consensus among member states,” Bagis said in his letter.