The sun rises for Europe in Istanbul, Turkish EU Affairs Minister Egemen Bağış said today, addressing the audience at an Erasmus student exchange program meeting in the city.
"A European Union without Turkey is a poor, plain and simple one," Bağış said.
"The sun of Europe rises from Istanbul every morning nowadays," he added, in an indirect reference to the current economic problems of the union.
The minister was speaking at the debut meeting of a project to unite the millions of one-time Erasmus students across the continent, the "Garagerasmus."
Note EU-Digest: Given some of the facts that are available Turkey certainly is not meeting EU standards when it comes to 'freedom of the press'. The
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) recently reported that Turkey
jailed the most journalists in 2012 - ahead of Iran and China. Based on the latest figures there are now some 76 journalists in prison, at least 61 in direct relation to their work. The evidence against the other 15 journalists was less clear
Turkey
recently also ranked 154th out of 179 countries - behind Iraq, Afghanistan,
and Russia - in the 2013 World Press Freedom Index released by Reporters
Without Borders. The group also called Turkey "the world's biggest prison for journalists". Article
301 of the Turkish penal code makes "insulting Turkishness" a
criminal offense, though what this law really means, or how it is
applied, remains subjective at best.
Read more: POLITICS - Europe's sun rises from Istanbul, Turkish EU minister says
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