Another EU Summit in Vain for Turkey

EU leaders have endorsed the decisions of the General Affairs and External Relations Council (GAERC) taken on 14 December 2010 regarding Turkey. Frankly speaking,  neither the EU Summit on 16-17 December 2010, nor the preceding meeting of GAERC had been followed with a great interest in Turkey. Although the December 2010 summit of the EU   was qualified as being a "critical appointment" between Turkey and the EU and the Enlargement Commissioner Štefan FÜLE warned the parties of a possible "train crash", no one expected a significant development in Turkey.  Most probably Turkey has got used to "critical appointments" and "train crashes" in recent years.

Hence it would be wrong to claim that the recent EU Summit had been expected   with great enthusiasm in Turkey.  Unfortunately in Turkey, nowadays the EU summits - even those which are expected to give a decision regarding Turkey- are being followed only by some EU experts and diplomats and bureaucrats who are dealing with EU. It is surprising to observe that the aforementioned EU summit went almost unnoticed in Turkish media with the exception of a few columnists.  Even the Turkish government has not given a serious response to the recent EU summit.