Last week the EU had announced that despite all the tension between them and the Erdoğan regime, Brussels still would not cut off funds to Ankara. The EU has given 23 million Euros to the AKP regime since March, but the Merkel government is reported to have started an initiative to cut off the EU aid planned for this year.

According to DW’s Turkish language service, diplomatic sources in Berlin said that as a result of the Merkel-led federal government’s efforts, the European Union will be cutting off the financial aid planned for Turkey.

The EU had planned to provide 4 billion 450 million Euros of financial aid to the AKP government between 2014 and 2020, but now wants to cut back on the remaining funds as part of sanctions Germany wants to impose upon Turkey. A decision will be made in the EU interim assessment meeting in fall.

The meeting for the funds given to Turkey as part of the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA II) will be held in September or October. After the meeting, reports say the EU will be reducing the available funds by several hundred million Euros.

After the April 16 Referendum rallies the AKP wanted to hold in Europe in March were banned, tensions between European countries and the Erdoğan regime had skyrocketed. Despite Erdoğan accusing Europe of employing Nazi practices and the accession negotiations being frozen, the EU had continued with the funds.

DESPITE CRISES MONEY KEPT FLOWING INTO ANKARA

German media had reported that despite the high tensions between Berlin and Ankara, the EU had given Ankara 23 million Euros more just since March. With that, the total money flow from the EU to the AKP regime was 190 million Euros in 2017.

And Brussels has given a total of 10 billion Euros to Ankara for accession talks and the refugee deal in the last 3 years. 3.3 billion Euros of this was given from 2014 to 2016. This made Turkey the biggest non-EU member beneficiary of EU funds.