ANKARA: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has for the first time suggested Turkey could hold a referendum over whether to continue its long-stalled bid to join the European Union.

Angrily lashing out at the bloc’s treatment of Ankara, Erdogan said Turkey could hold a referendum along the lines of the plebiscite in Britain, where voters are deciding on Thursday whether to stay in the European Union or leave. “We can stand up and ask the people just like the British are doing,” Erdogan said late on Wednesday at a speech in Istanbul, quoted by the state-run Anadolu news agency.

“We would ask ‘Do we continue the negotiations with the European Union or do we end it?’ If the people say ‘continue’, then we would carry on,” Erdogan said.

He had previously insisted on repeated occasions that full EU membership was Turkey’s strategic aim.

Marc Pierini, visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe, said there was “total incompatibility” with EU accession requirements at a time when Turkey was driving for a presidential system under Erdogan and clamping down on dissent in the media and civil society.

“Holding a referendum in Turkey is therefore only an accessory tool, which, if held in the current context, would produce a ‘no’ and therefore comfort current populist trends.” Polls in Turkey have shown that less than half of Turks now support EU membership, falling from a clear majority a decade ago.

A landmark deal agreed in March between Turkey and the European Union was expected to calm tensions and give new momentum to the Turkish membership bid.

But the EU is insisting it cannot grant Turkey the key sweetener of visa-free travel to the passport-free Schengen zone if it does not narrow the scope of its anti-terror laws, something Ankara has refused to do.

Published in Dawn, June 24th, 2016