TURKEY dismissed a vote by MEPs to suspend EU membership talks as “null and void” yesterday.

The EU Parliament voted 479-37 with 107 abstentions for a non-binding resolution “to initiate a temporary freeze” on talks with Ankara until “disproportionate measures under the state of emergency in Turkey are lifted.”

Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe group leader Guy Verhofstadt said: “By continuing the illusion of accession talks with an increasingly authoritarian regime, the EU is losing credibility, is fooling our citizens, and also betraying those Turkish citizens who look to Europe as their future.”

Turkey has sacked thousands of civil servants and locked up hundreds of journalists since this year’s failed coup.
But Turkish EU Minister Omer Celik shrugged off the motion, saying: “We would respect the motion if it was constructive despite being critical. However, this motion is politically inconsistent.

“They adopted it for political purposes,” he insisted. “Those who want to give us a message should know that the parliament’s message would not get through the Kapikule border gate” — a crossing between Turkey and the EU.

Mr Celik was speaking from southern Turkey, where a car bomb killed two people and injured 33 in his home town of Adana.

On Wednesday the pro-Kurdish HDP party warned of “repressive, even fatal policies in prisons” after the government replaced guards with “special security forces” armed with heavy weapons.

Ten HDP MPs have been imprisoned for alleged support for Kurdistan Workers Party fighters.

We need you support to keep running. If you like what you read please donate by clicking here