Ankara wants to see France as champion of Turkish integration in EU

PanARMENIAN.Net - Turkey is hoping that new French president Francois Hollande will open a fresh page in relations with Ankara and, unlike his predecessor, back the Muslim-majority nation's EU bid.

"We are hoping that he (Hollande) would open a new page in the very deep and fruitful historical relations between Turkey and France," AFP quoted Turkey's European Affairs Minister Egemen Bagis as saying.

Ankara would like to see France "become one of the champions of Turkish integration in the EU," as it was under president Jacques Chirac, he said.

France's relations with Turkey were frosty under outgoing president Nicolas Sarkozy, who opposed Turkish entry in the European Union. The ties further strained after the French parliament passed the bill penalizing the Armenian Genocide denial, which, however, was later ruled as unconstitutional by the French Constitutional Council.

"We are not in the business of creating animosity, we are in the business of creating friendship, where diplomacy and politics are part of finding solutions, not creating problems," Bagis told AFP.

For his part Hollande has noted that Turkey would not become an EU member during his five-year term - the road to EU accession is a long one.

Turkey and the EU began formal accession negotiations in 2005 but since then Brussels has opened with Ankara only 13 of the 35 policy chapters that every state must negotiate in order to join the bloc. Just one chapter has been successfully closed.

"Turkey can turn the grandest peace project of the history of mankind, which is the EU, from being a continental project to a global project," insisted Bagis, who sees Turkey as “a democratic inspiration in the Arab world.”