“Clearly Turkey is and stays a candidate country,” EU’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini told reporters. “Many of our colleagues prefer to focus on the red lines. I prefer to focus on what we have in common.”

But there could be no progress on Ankara’s bid to join the bloc without an end to human rights abuses. “Human rights, the rule of law, democracy, fundamental freedoms including media freedom are all basic imperative requirements for any progress towards the European Union,” EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn told a joint news conference with Turkey’s top diplomat Mevlut Cavusoglu, EU Affairs Minister Omer Celik and the EU’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.