Turkey to meet EU criteria on visas by next week: Turkish minister

A senior Turkish official says he expects the EU Commission will recommend the lifting of visas for Turks travelling to Europe in a report next week.

Turkey's minister for EU affairs, Volkan Bozkir, said on Thursday that Turkish legislation to meet European Union (EU) criteria on visa liberalization will be completed on May 2.

"We, our civic servants, ministers and myself, have been constantly having meetings for months. Now, both sides (EU and Turkey) are more or less aware of the situation we are facing. Therefore, unless there is an unexpected, unforeseen situation, we are expecting Tuesday's EU commission report to recommend dropping of visas," the minister said.

"Ratification of international agreements and legislation of the necessary laws have been completed. Naturally, there are operational measures, and steps taken by the government and ministries. When we include all of them, the last 10 article of security surveillance law will be legislated on Monday but we can even say that it is already legislated. After that, we will have met 72 criteria from our point of view."

Under an EU-Turkey controversial deal sealed last month, Ankara agreed to take back all the asylum seekers and refugees, who had used its territory to illegally reach the EU shores in return for a number of commitments from the EU, including a financial aid, visa liberalization and progress in its EU membership negotiations.

Turkey has been asking the the 28-nation bloc to allow its 79 million citizens to enter the bloc’s passport-free Schengen zone without a visa, a call that has faced 72 conditions, which are listed in an EU framework titled the Roadmap Towards a Visa Free Regime with Turkey.

Turkey says it has so far met most of the requirements, while the EU maintains that Ankara has only fulfilled less than half of all the criteria needed to get the visa waiver.

On Wednesday, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said in a statement that all the criteria must be met and that they “will not be watered down in the case of Turkey.”

Turkey faces an end-of-April deadline to meet all the 72 requirements. Then on May 4, the European Commission will propose to transfer Turkey to its visa-free list, providing that all criteria have been met. The EU member states and the European Parliament will then decide whether to approve the move.

However, the government in Ankara has so far faced widespread condemnation over its crackdown on critical media outlets, lawmakers, scholars, lawyers and NGOs.

European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans told EU lawmakers on Thursday that Turkey's crackdown on the media and human rights abuses are pushing the country further away from Europe. "If they want to come closer to Europe — that is what they state — they should improve the situation of the media, of human rights, of civil society."

Human Rights Watch recently urged the leaders of the European Union to get a correct understanding of the desperate situation of refugees at the Turkish-Syrian border and rethink a controversial deal they reached with Turkey for deportation of the asylum seekers.

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