The essence of the EU anchor for Turkish democracy
It was Mesut Yılmaz, the prime minister of the day, who declared that Turkey had suspended all political relations with the European Union back in 1997, following the Luxembourg summit in December 1997. Then, the EU Commission declared the Republic of Cyprus eligible to carry out membership negotiations representing the divided Turks in the north and excluding Turkey. Relations began again at the Helsinki summit in December 1999, after Greece lifted its veto; earlier that year Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was caught in Mogadishu airport after he was forced to leave the Greek embassy there, where he had been hiding, with a joint American-Turkish intelligence operation.
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