President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday (September 16) indicated that Turkey may part ways with the European Union, while also implying that the country is mulling ending its bid to join the 27-nation bloc.
Erdogan claimed that the EU is trying to sever ties with Turkey.
"The EU is making efforts to sever ties with Turkey," he told reporters before departing for the 78th UN General Assembly in New York.
"We will evaluate the situation, and if needed we will part ways with the EU,” he added.
The Turkish President was responding to a question regarding a recent report adopted by the European Parliament which said, “the accession process cannot resume under the current circumstances, and calls on EU to explore a parallel and realistic framework' for EU-Türkiye relations”.
Turkey had applied to join the EU in 1999 while the accession talks began in 2005. The accession negotiations were frozen in 2018 due to “democractic backsliding”, according to the European Parliament.
Erdogan's statement on Saturday came more than a week after Turkey's foreign minister had expressed his country's resolve to join the EU and urged the bloc to take steps to advance its bid.
(With AP inputs)
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