Turkish Press
April 29 2005
The Double Standard
BY SAMI KOHEN
MILLIYET- Hurriyet’s headline yesterday read: `The Paris Criteria.’
Below the headline was a detailed account of how the French police
attacked and beat a group of high school students two weeks ago. The
French press almost succeeded in covering up the beatings, but thanks
to Choc magazine, the scandal was made public. Strangely enough,
neither France nor the European Union has made any explanation of the
incident. However, when the Turkish police beat several demonstrators
in Istanbul back on March 6, the EU wasted no time criticizing
Turkey. The difference between how the EU reacted to the incident in
Istanbul and how it reacted to Paris shows clearly the double
standard applied to Turkey by the EU. It’s our right to criticize
such a scandal, but we should also work hard to prevent such things
from happening in our own country.
Turkey’s Secretary-General for EU Relations Murat Sungar yesterday
made interesting remarks at a conference on Turkish-EU relations
organized by Dogus University. Sungar said that Turkey’s membership
talks aren’t always centered on the Armenian and Cyprus issues, that
there are other things discussed in the negotiation process, such as
educational, financial, and environmental reforms.
If we don’t want to stray from our path to EU membership, we must
focus on how we can perform all these in addition to political
reforms.