Turkey’s EU minister warns against rising extremism

By Onur Usta and Fatma Esma Arslan

PARIS (AA) - Turkey's EU minister warned Friday that Europe was building walls instead of setting up bridges over crises.

"The rising far-right movement in Europe is ideologically creating brand-new Berlin walls within the European continent," Omer Celik told reporters at the Turkish embassy in Paris.

Celik said that the only way out was for Europe to turn crises into opportunities as it did in past, referring to the refugee crisis, adding that the EU had failed to strengthen its enlargement policy and negotiation grounds with Turkey.

"Because of their undermining approach and withdrawing their enlargement policy, they have not been able to turn this crisis into an opportunity.

"They instead came out with an approach that threatens the common peace of all" he said.

The European Parliament approved last November a non-binding motion to freeze EU membership talks with Turkey, in response to post-coup investigations and recent developments in the country including measures taken within the framework of the fight against the PKK and FETO terrorist groups.

Celik went on to say that Europeans would regret the rise of far-right, saying "they [Europeans] will experience this shame because they could not resist these racists, and picked on Turkey, refugees and Muslims".

Minister Celik had meetings with the French Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Marc Ayrault, Minister of State for EU Affairs Harlem Desir and Senate President Gerard Larcher on his first day of visit to the French capital on Thursday. He also spoke at a conference on the future of Europe at IFRI, a French think tank on international affairs.