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“The EU’s serious concerns on continued negative developments in the rule of law, fundamental rights and the judiciary have not been credibly addressed by Turkey,” the Commission added.
“Turkey’s [EU] accession negotiations have effectively come to a standstill,” it said.
A Nato ally, Turkey has been negotiating EU membership formally since 2005.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry dismissed the report as “biased” and “far from constructive”, rejecting the criticism
of the handling of Turkey’s economy, democracy and courts.
“Just as it [Turkey] is not straying from the EU, it remains committed to the EU membership process despite attempts by some circles to push it away,” the ministry said. “Turkey
is acting within the framework
of universal norms, in line with fundamental rights, democracy and the principle of rule of law.”
Turkey has faced several years of harsh Commission annual reports. This time the EU executive once again intensified its criticism, pointing out unsatisfactory monetary policy and public administration and widespread corruption.
Biggest foreign investor
The EU is Turkey’s biggest foreign investor and relies on the Erdogan administration to host some 4mn Syrians that have fled the civil war in their country, rather than allowing them to move on to Europe.
More pressure was heaped on the lira by an announcement from Erdogan and the leader of the Turkish Cypriots that a town in Cyprus that has been closed since a 1974 Turkish invasion would be re-opened. The invasion ultimately split the island in the eastern Mediterranean. The reopening of the town would likely wreck prospects for Turkish Cypriot talks with the Greek Cypriots aimed at bringing more unity to the divided island.
Turkey's economic data compiled by loyal officials and “detached from reality” says ex stats chief
bne IntellIiNews
Turkish economic data are “detached from reality” with statistics officials picked for their loyalty to the Erdogan administration rather than merit,
a former chief of the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK, aka Turkstat) who’s now an opposition politician has reportedly said.
“When you tamper with data, you are treading the Greek path,” Birol Aydemir told Bloomberg in a phone interview, referencing the distorted accounting of Greek public finances that helped helped trigger the 2009 eurozone crisis.
“Institutions whose independence has been impaired can’t act objectively,” Aydemir was cited as saying in a separate interview with the Sozcu daily, adding that national recordings of growth, employment and inflation were all “dubious”.
bne IntelliNews has for more than three years periodically run stories on questions being raised about the reliability of Turkey’s official data. In September 2017, we reported on how Germany’s Commerzbank had concluded that the country’s official GDP figures were “more than questionable”. In the past two years, we’ve reported on how opposition politicians have protested in parliament that Turkey’s inflation data is not credible.
‘Screened by Eurostat’
The TUIK declined to comment specifically on Aydemir’s accusations, Bloomberg said, adding that in the past it has rejected opposition criticism, saying its system of checks makes it impossible for anyone to change data and that the bureau’s procedures are regularly screened by European agency Eurostat.
Aydemir led TurkStat from 2011 to 2016. He is a co-founder of Turkey’s new opposition Deva Party, led by Turkey’s former economy czar, Ali Babacan,
a former ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Aydemir has refused to discuss with journalists allegations on how the TUIK specifically alters the data it collects.
Turkey’s official inflation rate in June was 11.4%, but in a survey conducted that month by Metropoll, around one-third of respondents said the real inflation rate was above 30%. Only around 15% of those quizzed said the official figure was correct.
Turkish opposition politicians claim some official Turkish statisticians are more like magicians pulling rabbits out of hats.
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