Former EU commissioner: EU cannot be a global player without Turkey

Former EU Commissioner Gunter Verheugen said on Tuesday that Turkey's cooperation with the 27-member bloc will make it stronger and that the candidate country's integration into the EU would absolutely not be a burden.  Verheugen said an alternative for Turkey to cooperation with the EU would be to deepen its relations with Russia, the Caucasus, Iran and the Middle East but warned that this would be to Turkey's disadvantage. He claimed that Turkey would lose its economic competitiveness if it chooses to stay out of European markets. Despite recent expansion into markets in the Middle East, 51 percent of Turkey's overall annual trade is with European Union member states. "Both Turkey and the EU have advantages and disadvantages in their relations with the countries affected by the Arab Spring. Therefore, it would be useful to develop a common strategy and to work together. For now, we lack this strategy," Verheugen said in his speech titled "Turkish Foreign Policy after the Arab Spring and Turkish-EU Relations" at a meeting in Ankara of the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey on Tuesday.