国际英语资讯:Spotlight: Turkey-EU relations: New lease of life or just wishful thinking?_时事

国际英语资讯:Spotlight: Turkey-EU relations: New lease of life or just wishful thinking?

The pre-referendum campaign that granted Turkey's dominant leader sweeping powers produced new spats with EU members Germany and the Netherlands, whose authorities Erdogan likened to Nazis when they had prevented Turkish politicians from campaigning in their countries.

"The talks were held in a constructive mood and both parties agreed to move on. This in self is a good thing," said to Xinhua a Turkish diplomatic source without giving details on the timetable mentioned by Erdogan which puzzled some experts.

"This is called realpolitik, let us not rejoice ourselves with haste. The full membership issue (For Turkey) is not on the table any more," commented senior EU expert Cengiz Aktar.

"Both parties estimated that they have no other option to work with each other, that's all," reacted Aktar, professor of political science and senior scholar at Istanbul policy center, adding that strategically speaking, Europe and the West in general are adamant about keeping Turkey in NATO and out of the Russian sphere of influence.

Turkey complains about slow progress in its stalled EU accession talks, discussions on visa-free travel for Turks to the EU and disbursement of EU funds to millions of Syrian refugees living in Turkey.

The Turkish government's spokesman Numan Kurtulmus said on Monday that Turkey "wants to leave tensions with the EU behind" but the focus of renewed dialogue with the bloc should be on the axis of opening new accession chapters, blocked for many months because of the opposition of some member countries such as Austria.