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UN Head Warns EU of Collapsing Relations with Turkey

By Cihan News Agency
Saturday, November 04, 2006

Kemal Dervis, the head of the U.N. Development Program, warned the European Union that the bloc should repair its relations with Turkey or else it will face the collapse of strategic ties with unpredictable consequences.

Dervis, a former Turkish economy minister, told the London-based Financial Times that some EU members opposed Turkey's EU bid not simply because of the country's bad records on human rights. Dervis claimed that they feared Turkey's predominantly Muslim identity and its unemployment rate.

Dervis stated that European Union needed to change the way it talked to Turkey, adding that the problems could be jointly solved by setting objective criteria.