TURKEY SET FOR NEW REFORMS TO STRENGTHEN DEMOCRACY
Agence France Presse — English
April 12, 2006 Wednesday 11:52 AM GMT
Turkey on Wednesday rejected criticism that it had lost its drive to
align with EU norms and announced fresh reforms to further limit the
powers of the military and expand the rights of non-Muslim minorities.
“Some say the reforms have stopped,” Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul
told a news conference. “This is not true. We are very determined to
go ahead with the reforms.”
Turkey opened membership talks with the European Union in October,
but the government has been accused since of failing to maintain the
pace of the reforms, turning instead to domestic matters ahead of
parliamentary and presidential elections in 2007.
A particular area of concern has been the new penal code, under which
prominent intellectuals have been brought to trial for criticizing
state institutions or “denigrating the Turkish national identity.”
The new reform plan foresees no further amendments to the penal code,
whose proper implementation, Gul said, requires time and a “change
of mentality” among the judiciary.
The package includes a bill that puts military spending — long a
controversial issue in Turkish politics — under the audit of the
Court of Accounts, which acts on the behalf of parliament.
The government also plans an amendment to the law dealing with courts
martial that will “reduce to a minimum the prosecution of civilians
by military courts,” Gul said.
Another draft, already before parliament, will lift restrictions on
the property rights of non-Muslim religious foundations, an issue on
which the EU has long pressed Ankara.
The bill, however, does not foresee the return to or compensation of
non-Muslim foundations for their properties confiscated by the state
and sold to third parties in the past.
Predominantly Muslim Turkey is home to small groups of Jews and
Christians, mainly Orthodox Greeks and Armenians, most of them
concentrated in Istanbul.
The plan contains no measures of direct concern to the sizeable
Kurdish minority, whose leaders are seeking broader cultural and
political freedoms.
“Reform is an endless process,” Gul said when asked about the package’s
shortcomings. “What matters is the direction one takes and Turkey’s
direction is toward more democracy and the expansion of rights and
freedoms.”
The package also aims to:
– make the funding of political parties more transparent,
– set up a parliamentary political ethics committee,
– step up the combat against corruption,
– introduce an ombudsman system to settle differences between
indsividuals and the state,
– and amend the Settlement Law to end discriminatory measures against
migrant populations, including the Rom.