By MELISSA EDDY and CHRIS COTTRELL
BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany met with Turkey’s prime minister here on Wednesday and pledged that the European Union would continue to pursue talks “in good faith” over Turkey’s accession to the bloc, despite disagreements that have proved challenging for both sides.
“The E.U. is an honest negotiating partner,” Ms. Merkel said. “These negotiations will continue irrespective of the questions that we have to clarify.”
Her pledge came after the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, warned that the European Union stood in danger of losing Turkey if it was not granted membership by 2023.
“No other country has been kept waiting, knocking on the door of the E.U., for such a long time,” Mr. Erdogan told a gathering in Berlin late Tuesday, hours after he opened his country’s new embassy to Germany. An ever stronger economic and political force in the region, Turkey has been in negotiations to join the bloc since 2005, and some analysts have worried that a frustrated Turkey might shift from its Western focus to building stronger ties with Moscow and Tehran.
Despite Turkey’s status as a NATO ally and its long-running ties to much of Europe, Germany, France, Austria and the Netherlands have never fully warmed to the idea of granting it full European Union membership. Ms. Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union has even suggested that Turkey be granted instead a special status in the form of a “privileged partnership.”
On Wednesday, the chancellor insisted that she and the Turkish leader had been able to work together despite their differences on membership.
She praised the openness with which Turkey had accepted the flood of refugees — estimated at more than 100,000 — who have poured in from Syria and the “prudence” with which Mr. Erdogan’s government had handled the recent threat of escalating frictions at the border.
She also pledged German humanitarian assistance “wherever needed” to help Turkey cope, acknowledging that the Syrian refugees were “a real strain” on the country. Neither she nor Mr. Erdogan broached the issue of whether the rest of Europe would be asked to take in Syrians.
Germany is Turkey’s largest trading partner, with bilateral trade reaching $40.7 billion in 2011, despite the economic crisis in Europe. To explain the strength of the Turkish economy, Mr. Erdogan points to austerity measures and restructuring programs pushed through by his government, in similar scale to those being sought by Germany in several of the European Union’s weaker member states.
Given the potential for tensions, the two leaders seemed generally relaxed with each other. Even reference to Cyprus, home to one of Europe’s most intractable ethnic divides and the reason Turkish accession talks have ground to a halt, did not overshadow their appearance.
The island is broken into the mainly Turkish-speaking north — occupied by Turkey since an invasion in 1974 — and the mainly Greek-speaking Republic of Cyprus in the south, which the European Union recognizes exclusively. The republic currently holds the European Union’s rotating presidency.
Ms. Merkel refrained from comment after Mr. Erdogan said that she had told him in the past that accepting a divided Cyprus into the union had been a mistake. Mr. Erdogan also took a dig at the republic on Tuesday night, asking whether it was really “southern Cyprus” that wielded so much power.
The European Commission has said that Turkey must not only bend on Cyprus, but it also has a long way to go before its standards on human rights and freedom of speech can reach the levels required for membership.
Turkey’s minister for European Union affairs, Egemen Bagis, pointed out earlier in Berlin the progress that his country had made on human rights and freedom of speech since Mr. Erdogan’s party came into power about 10 years ago. He cited Kurdish language broadcasts and the restitution of property rights to religious minorities as examples of what he called “a much more democratic and transparent” country.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: November 2, 2012
An article on Thursday about Germany’s pledge to Turkey that the European Union would continue to consider its bid for membership misidentified the year that Turkey began negotiations to join the bloc. It was 2005, not 1995.
A version of this article appeared in print on November 1, 2012, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Turkey Given Reassurance By Germany On Talks.
via Germany Says Europe Will Pursue Talks on Turkey – NYTimes.com.
