BY YILMAZ OZTUNA
TURKIYE- For years, I have said in this column that the duty of chief negotiator is too important and burdensome to fall under the Foreign Ministry.
The premier just appointed Egemen Bagis state minister responsible for Turkey's European Union membership affairs. This is also an important indicator that he will take more of an interest in the EU. The number of Cabinet ministers thereby rose by one. The European Union Secretariat General was also separated from the Foreign Ministry and attached to the Prime Ministry.
Bagis was born in 1970. When he was 32, in 2002, he became Istanbul deputy, and in 2007, he was reelected. Bagis was made Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's chief advisor for foreign affairs, and the Justice and Development Party's (AKP) deputy chairman. He has spent a lot of time in New York, where he worked and went to school. He knows the US and speaks English well.
Europe has a different environment and conditions than the US. But as Bagis also served as the deputy chair of the NATO Parliamentarians Assembly's Turkish Group, he is also familiar with Europe's NATO member states.
Turkey will watch his steps closely. Bagis will work hard and well with veteran diplomats to promote Turkey's aim of full EU membership. He surely will be in close contact with Erdogan in Brussels next week.
It seems that Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro and of course, Croatia, and even Serbia and Kosovo will join the EU before Turkey. Let's also not forget Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia. But in the words of Republic of Turkey founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, 'This nation was not been created to be embarrassed'."