[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
’s government is under "huge pressure" from its people to abandon its decades-old drive to join the European Union
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
because they see it applying double standards towards their country, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Tuesday.
Speaking at a forum in the Slovene mountain resort of Bled, Cavusoglu also warned that Europe could be heading towards instability and could succumb to extremism due to the strains of its twin economic and migration crises.
Cavusoglu also repeated his previous criticism of EU leaders for not showing sufficient solidarity with Turkey after a botched military coup in July in which President Tayyip Erdogan narrowly avoided capture and possible death.
"Turkish people see the double standard," Cavusoglu said. "We are under huge pressure to stop the negotiating process."
Ankara, which has been seeking EU membership for decades and began formal accession talks in 2005, has long accused the bloc of treating it differently to other candidate nations.
Some European politicians have spoken out against admitting Turkey, a large, mainly Moslem nation of nearly 80 million people that borders Iraq and Syria and has had a patchy record on democracy and human rights
...which are usually entirely different from personal
liberty...
over the decades.
Relations have become especially strained after EU governments criticised the scale of Erdogan’s crackdown on those he accused of organising or backing the failed coup on July 15.