Van Trade Chamber [TSO] organized a meeting on “The Developments of EU-Turkey Relations in the Eyes of Media” by the EU Information Center, where local and national press members from the city participated.

Can Baydarol, a European Union expert who came together with the press in a breakfast hall, said that, “When the full membership negotiation started with the EU, Turkiye’s people supported the EU at 75 percent. Today 25 percent support the EU.”

Baydarol pointed out that globalization couldn’t solve the world problem, “New dictated by globalization to the world conditions, globalization did not solve the problems of the world but it globalized. We are against such a fact. While all of the central and eastern European countries, which have been separated from the Soviet system, have increasingly sheltered under the EU roof, but we have experienced a process like the exclusion of Turkiye from this process. This was a period of great disappointment. EU to Turkiye, ‘forget the full membership and settle with the Customs Union,’ said. That Customs Union was another debate. In analyzing the relations between Turkiye and the EU, we have to make an analysis by evaluating the relations between 1989 and the very different period between 1989 and 2001 with a much different view from 2001 until today’s relations.”

Baydarol said that when the negotiations for full membership with the EU began, 75 percent of the public support was reduced to 25 percent today, “However, the Turkiye people supported the EU at 75 percent as full membership negotiations started. Now it has reduced to 25 percent. The belief in becoming a full member of the EU has been destroyed. How the political decision of the full membership of Turkiye will come out when Germany and France oppose it. I do not believe that under these circumstances when I consider the case of events as a normal citizen. There is a belief erosion. (Yılmaz Sönmez - ILKHA)