Turkey is no "docile supplicant" for EU accession, Erdogan warns

Jan 17, 2011, 10:29 GMT

Brussels/Ankara - Turkey is not prepared to beg an increasingly hostile European Union to be let in into the club, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Monday.

Turkey has been negotiating EU membership with Brussels since 2004, but talks have ground almost to a halt due to Turkey's involvement in the Cyprus dispute and to entrenched Franco-German opposition to its EU application.

'Our European friends should realize that Turkey-EU relations are fast approaching a turning point ... we are no more a country that would wait at the EU's door like a docile supplicant,' Erdogan wrote in an opinion piece on the United States magazine Newsweek.

Describing their labour markets and welfare systems as 'comatose,' their economies as 'stagnant' and their societies as 'near geriatric,' Erdogan argued that EU countries needed Turkey's economic and demographic dynamism to get out of their current mess.

He added that the EU would benefit from Turkey's new-found activism in foreign affairs, which Erdogan maintained has 'yielded fruit in Iraq and Afghanistan, in the Balkans, and also in regard to the Iranian nuclear program.'

The Turkish leader also boasted about his country's 'political stability,' glossing over the simmering conflict between his moderate Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the traditionally secular military.

'Some claim that Turkey has no real alternative to Europe ... however, the opposite is just as valid. Europe has no real alternative to Turkey,' Erdogan concluded.

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