EU Foreign Ministers to Discuss Turkey Referendum Next Week

EghtesadOnline: European Union foreign ministers will discuss Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s referendum victory at a scheduled meeting on April 28, EU foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini said.

News ID: ۷۷۵۵۶۱

19 April 2017

“We will discuss the outcome of the vote and the future of our relations with Turkey at the informal gathering of foreign ministers from the 28 EU member states, which I will chair next week in Malta,” Mogherini said on Tuesday in a statement.

The vote, in which the approval of expanded presidential powers won by a majority of 51.4 percent, has fallen under suspicion because ballots that didn’t carry an official stamp were allowed to be tallied. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has faulted the vote process, Bloomberg reported.

‘‘Today I called Tana De Zulueta, who is leading the OSCE electoral observation mission to Turkey, to hear directly about the results of the work they are doing on the constitutional referendum,’’ Mogherini said.

De Zulueta said on Monday that freedom of expression was curbed during the campaign, that the conditions of the vote fell ‘‘well short’’ of international standards, and that some election monitors were inhibited from doing the job they were invited to do.