TURKEY TOLD FREEDOM OF SPEECH MUST BE A PRIORITY
By Daniel Dombey And Fidelius Schmid
Financial Times (London, England)
October 17, 2006 Tuesday
London Edition 1
Turkey was told yesterday by the European Union that it had to
safeguard freedom of expression in the country as a "matter of urgency"
amid diminishing expectations that Ankara’s stalled membership bid
can be revived.
Olli Rehn, EU enlargement commissioner, told Turkey’s delegation at
the last formal meeting between the two this year that it was not
good enough to merely wait for Turkish judges to rule on the issue
and that legislative action was needed.
Yesterday’s meeting took place amid widespread expectations that
Ankara’s membership talks would reach a crisis point later this year
and could prove impossible to retrieve.
The European Commission’s hopes of convincing Turkey to carry out
reforms have been greatly complicated by France.
Last week the French National Assembly supported a bill that would
make it a crime to deny that there was a genocide of Armenians during
the last years of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey says no genocide occurred.
Abdullah Gul, Turkey’s foreign minister, yesterday said the National
Assembly vote had hit France’s prestige as a country that allowed
full freedom of expression, while adding that Turkey would not repeat
France’s mistakes.
But he failed to give a clear signal that Turkey would revise or
remove article 301 of its penal code, which forbids denigration of
the Turkish state. Instead, he merely said that "we are following
the implementation (of the article) closely and we will do what
is necessary".
Brussels believes that Turkey’s reform process has slowed dramatically
and will issue a critical report next month. Its conclusions will
form the starting point for a debate between EU member states on
whether to declare a formal suspension of talks.
This is likely to be decided by heads of state and government later
in the year.
In effect the negotiations have already stopped, with Cyprus, which is
an EU member state but has no diplomatic relations with Ankara, vetoing
the opening and closing of any of the individual dossiers in the talks.
Cyprus makes clear it will not approve any such steps while Turkey
fails to meet an EU deadline to open its own ports and airports to
Cypriot vessels.
An attempt to break the deadlock by Finland, the current holder of
the EU presidency, has shown little sign of being accepted.
The proposal would see the EU taking charge of a port in the Turkish
Cypriot northern half of the island, to allow Turkish Cypriots to
trade with the rest of the EU, and return a nearby town to the Greek
Cypriot south.