Europe picks a bad moment to engage Turkey
David Gardner David Gardner
No wonder Erdogan was pictured beaming at his meeting with Merkel
The panic in Europe at the waves of Syrian refugees surging across its borders is real enough, but the EU could hardly have chosen a worse moment to rediscover its interest in Turkey. In the face of opposition led by France and Germany, the EU all but abandoned Turkey about seven years ago when, with accession negotiations working as an engine of reform, the country was becoming a real democracy. Now, influenced by Angela Merkel, the German chancellor who was in Istanbul at the weekend, the EU is re-embracing Turkey just as the country, under the increasingly one-man rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is in danger of becoming more like Syria.
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