Excerpt:
Turkey will not wait at Europe's door forever and is ready to walk away from EU accession talks if rising Islamophobia and hostility from some member states persist, President Tayyip Erdogan told Reuters in a wide-ranging interview on Tuesday.
Speaking at the presidential palace less than two weeks after winning sweeping new powers in a referendum, a relaxed Erdogan said a decision by a leading European human rights body to put Turkey back on a watch list was "entirely political" and that Ankara did not recognize the move.
The Strasbourg-based Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe said it put Turkey back on review over its crackdown on dissent since last year's coup attempt, rights violations, and concerns about Erdogan's increased grip on power.