Turkey: Now an ex-Premier lets the cat out of the bag
THE Prime Minister is ‘lying to the British people’, it was said last night, after Sir John Major suggested Turkey could join the EU in as little as a decade.
Iain Duncan Smith, the Leave campaigner who resigned as Work and Pensions Secretary earlier this year, said former PM Sir John, a staunch Remain backer, had ‘let the cat out of the bag’.
It also emerged yesterday that membership talks between the EU and Turkey are due to be reopened next Thursday – a week after the referendum.
The pro-Brexit camp has highlighted the possibility of Turkish entry to the EU, saying it could open the doors to hundreds of thousands of workers coming to Britain under free movement rules if we vote to Remain.
David Cameron claimed earlier this week that membership was not on the cards in the next few decades and that, at current rates, it would not take place until the year 3000. But yesterday, standing alongside Mr Cameron at a Remain campaign event, Sir John said he did not believe that Turkey would join the EU as early as 2026 – but indicated it was a possibility.
‘I find it extraordinary that people should point to Turkey, and suggest that 77million Turks are suddenly going to descend and take all of our hospital places and all our school places and all our local authority dwellings,’ he said. ‘They have been negotiating for 30 years without getting in. They are not going to get in, in my judgment, for one, two decades – perhaps not ever.
‘Even if it happened in some far distant future, what obscenity it is to suggest all 77million Turks are suddenly going to say, “Let’s go to the United Kingdom, the national minimum wage has risen by 50p, let’s get there as fast as we can.”
‘If they do happen to say that, let me just mention to them in advance that they would actually earn more in France or in Germany than they would here.’
Yesterday the Prime Minister repeated his prediction that Turkey may not be able to join the EU until the year 3000.
Asked about Leave warnings of a potential early accession for Turkey, the PM told LBC radio: ‘The issue simply isn’t going to arise. This is the reddest of red herrings. At the current rate of progress, Turkey could qualify to join in about the year 3000.’ EU leaders pledged in March to speed up Turkey’s long- stalled membership talks as part of an accord on tackling migration.
Mr Duncan Smith said: ‘David Cameron has repeatedly claimed that Turkey is not going to join the EU, despite it being Government policy. Now the Turkish government has confirmed that he is the “chief supporter” of their bid to join the EU.
‘Cameron also said that Turkey will not join until the year 3000, but Sir John Major has let the cat out of the bag – Turkey could be in the EU in ten years’ time.
‘I’m afraid there is no conclu- sion you can draw from this except that David Cameron is colluding with the EU and lying to the British people. Families are suffering the consequences of uncontrolled migration.
‘With five countries lining up to join the EU – Albania, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Turkey – this problem can only get worse.’
Last night, the Turkish president’s chief adviser, Ilnur Cevik, told BBC2’s Newsnight that Mr Cameron had changed his mind to Turkey’s membership of the EU for political purposes. ‘We thought that Mr Cameron was our chief supporter in our quest for EU membership,’ he said. ‘We are really, really flabbergasted.’