BRUSSELS: Turkey and the European Union began a new round of membership talks on Tuesday months after EU member states delayed them in protest over a Turkish crackdown on anti-government demonstrations.
EU and Turkish negotiators spoke optimistically about a new momentum in Turkey's long-stalled membership drive after they met in Brussels to begin talks on a new chapter, or policy area, of accession talks, the first opened in more than three years.
The start of the talks on regional policy was delayed from June after Germany and several other EU governments blocked them due to concerns about Ankara's forceful handling of protests in which six people were killed and 8,000 injured.
"This is really a turning point in Turkish-EU relations. We are opening a chapter after a gap of 40 months.
It is symbolically very important," Turkey's chief EU negotiator Egemen Bagis told a news conference. Referring to an EU official's call for greater engagement with Turkey, Bagis joked: "We are ready to not only get engaged, but also get married."
But Bagis also attacked EU policies on the Middle East, saying many Turks could not understand why the EU was not being more vocal about what he called the rape of democracy in Egypt, where the army ousted Islamist President Mohamed Mursi in July.
Turks also questioned why the EU had not reacted more strongly to the "brutality" of President Bashar al-Assad's government in Syria, Turkey's neighbour, he said.
Turkey began negotiations to join the EU in 2005, 18 years after applying. But a series of political obstacles, notably over the divided island of Cyprus, and resistance to Turkish membership in Germany and France, have slowed progress.
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