On Wednesday, September 13, while the European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker was outlining his vision for the European Union in Brussels, Turkey\u2019s EU Minister \u00d6mer \u00c7elik was delivering a speech at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, in London.<\/p>\n
In his State of the Union speech, Jean-Claude Juncker was describing<\/a> Turkey as a country that has been \u201cmoving away from the European Union in leaps and bounds,\u201d with no prospect of becoming a member in the \u201cforeseeable future\u201d.<\/p>\n Europe Minister \u00d6mer \u00c7elik\u2019s speech was also looking ahead. Titled: \u2018Turkey, Britain and Europe: A Vision for a Common Future<\/a> , it offered a world view that could not have been more different than Mr. Juncker\u2019s.<\/p>\n The European Commission President believed that the European Union was \u201cbouncing back\u201d after Britain\u2019s decision to leave. \u201cBrexit is not everything. It\u2019s not the future of Europe\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Mr. \u00c7elik talked<\/a> about \u201cthe shaken self-integrity of Europe\u201d after the Brexit vote, predicting that the UK will continue to be one if the biggest powers in Europe. Turkey, too, together with Britain, would remain a strong pillar of the European architecture. \u201cThe UK, \u00a0Europe\u2019s gateway to the Atlantic, and Turkey, Europe\u2019s gateway to Asia, will continue to shape Europe\u2019s politics,\u201d he said<\/a>.<\/p>\n Juncker wanted Turkey to show more respect for the EU. \u201cStop calling our member states and our heads of state and government fascists and Nazis\u201d he warned.<\/p>\n He criticized Turkey for the crackdown on political opponents, saying, \u201cJournalists belong in editorial offices amid heated debate and not in prison\u201d.<\/p>\n In London, Mr. \u00c7elik, himself a former journalist, carefully avoided mentioning Turkey\u2019s journalists; nor did he acknowledge the main reasons behind the deepening row with Europe in his scripted speech. Instead, he claimed the public in Europe was losing \u201ctrust in the EU\u2019s loyalty to universal values.<\/p>\n The apparent discrepancy between visions outlined by the EU President and Turkey\u2019s Minister for Europe, is, partly, due to Ankara\u2019s failure to formulate a strategic vision.<\/p>\n The other, perhaps bigger, part of the reason is that Turkey seems to lack rigorous analysis and critical thinking.<\/p>\n In an increasingly complex and unpredictable world, arrogant defiance and reactiveness alone cannot be the main foreign policy tools for long.<\/p>\n Putting forward cogent arguments is the pre-requisite for an effective communication strategy, too.<\/p>\n EU Minister \u00c7elik made more than one flawed assumption while speaking to a select group of people in\u00a0 London on Wednesday.<\/p>\n Perhaps the most significant one was underestimating how well-informed his polite audience was about today\u2019s Turkey. He also did not seem to realize how scathingly critical even the most establishment-friendly think-tanks and media in Britain can be.<\/p>\n In a speech where he frequently talked about the need to build bridges, Mr \u00c7elik\u00a0pulled the drawbridge further up, instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Wednesday, September 13, while the European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker was outlining his vision for the European Union in Brussels, Turkey\u2019s EU Minister \u00d6mer \u00c7elik was delivering a speech at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, in London. In his State of the Union speech, Jean-Claude Juncker was describing Turkey as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29100"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29100"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29105,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29100\/revisions\/29105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}