"Turkey and the European Union
by David Casa
Relations between Turkey and the European Union were suspended for most of the 1970s and 1980s for several reasons: the military coup of 1971, the Cyprus intervention of 1974 and the military coup of 1980, which closed down political parties and trade unions and imprisoned many people on political grounds. Eventually, the EU summit held in Helsinki in December 1999 made a historic decision. Turkey was officially designated “a candidate country destined to join the union on the basis of the same criteria applied to the other candidate countries”."
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