Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s coalition government had lied to Trkiye about Berlin’s pledge to support the country’s EU membership bid, declassified files have revealed. German weekly Der Spiegel published excerpts from the Foreign Ministry’s archive, which showed significant details about Kohl government’s policy towards Trkiye in the early 1990s. According to a document dated July 13, 1992, then German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel told his Turkish counterpart Hikmet Cetin during a visit to Ankara that Germany would support Trkiye’s full membership to the EU, what was then called the European Community (EC). Kinkel tried to assure his Turkish counterpart that the impression that Western Europeans do not want Trkiye in the European club was wrong, and he stressed that Berlin will support Ankara in its goal to become a full member of the EC, according to a declassified report. But only three days later, former Chancellor Kohl told Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland during a visit to Oslo that his government was under massive pressure from Trkiye for full membership, but the conservative politician stressed that he was against it, and said: ‘Trkiye cannot become a member’ of the European club. Also on November 5, 1992, the ex-German chancellor told the then Polish Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka that Trkiye’s full membership to the European Community was “inconceivable” from a German perspective, according to declassified files. Kohl was Germany’s longest-serving chancellor, and led the country for 16 years, from 1982 to 1998. His Conservative party, the Christian Democratic Union, had long opposed full membership perspective, but favored ‘special relations’ between the EU and Trkiye. Ankara applied for membership in 1987 and European leaders agreed in 1999 that Trkiye is eligible to join the European Union. Ankara’s EU accession negotiations started in 2005, but entered into a stalemate after 2007 due to the Cyprus problem and opposition by several member states to Trkiye’s full membership. Despite recent pledges by European leaders to revive dialogue and cooperation with Tkiye, accession negotiations remain stalled because of political disagreements.
Source: Anadolu Agency