Parliamentary Assembly

STRASBOURG - A Serbian parliamentary delegation on Thursday walked out of a Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) session in Strasbourg, France, in protest at a French court's decision to release Ramus Haradinaj, a former "Kosovo Liberation Army" commander charged by Serbia with war crimes.

Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu was in Malta on April 28 to attend the Gymnich meeting of the European Union foreign ministers, in his first encounter with his EU colleagues after the Turkish referendum and the decision of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) that reinstates monitoring process on Turkey after 13 years.

Alas, the expected has happened. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) decided on Tuesday to reopen the monitoring procedure with Turkey, thereby lowering its level of democracy.

Advocating Turkey's membership of the European Union used to be a strategic vision of all past U.S. administrations - both Democratic and Republican - especially since late 1980s. The U.S.

Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu will attend a European Union meeting in Malta on April 28 amid increasing tension between the bloc and Ankara due to the former's criticisms of the deterioration of rights in the problematic candidate country which have been fueled by a referendum that gave President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sweeping new powers.

Turkey's EU Minister Ömer Çelik has stated that developments that threaten global security necessitate a "reinforced relationship" between Ankara and Brussels. 

His statement came a day after the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) re-opened monitoring process on Turkey, and it also touched on his visits to Brussels and Strasbourg in the coming weeks. 

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) reintroduced a monitoring process for Turkey on April 25, citing "serious deterioration of the functioning of democratic institutions."

Some 113 members of the 324-member PACE voted in favor of the report, titled "The Functioning of Democratic Institutions in Turkey," while 45 members voted against it and 12 abstained.

Turkey's impressive democratization process began in late 1999 after the European Union approved Ankara's full membership candidacy to the bloc at the historic Helsinki Summit. As a diplomatic correspondent who has been covering the troubled relationship between Turkey and the EU for more than two decades, I had the chance to observe all phases and all dimensions of this bitter process. 

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) voted on April 25 to reintroduce a monitoring process for Turkey with the move triggering fury in Ankara.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) is scheduled to meet on April 25 to discuss whether to degrade Turkey's status and reopen a monitoring process against the country, in what has been decried as a politically motivated move by Ankara.