Agence France Presse — English
September 29, 2005 Thursday
EU is testing Turkey’s patience: senior official
ANKARA
The speaker of the Turkish parliament accused the European Union
Thursday of testing Ankara’s patience by applying “double standards”
to its long-standing membership bid.
“It seems as if our patience is being tested.
Looking at what is being done to Turkey one sees that there are some
quarters that hope to get rid of us by forcing us to walk away from
the (negotiating) table,” Bulent Arinc said in an interview with NTV
television.
“When one compares the treatment of Romania, Bulgaria or Malta to the
different treatment accorded to Turkey one sees … insincerity,
double standards and discrimination,” he added.
Arinc was commenting on a resolution adopted by the European
Parliament Wednesday which urged Ankara to acknowledge that the
Ottomans committed “genocide” against Armenians during World War I
and to recognize Cyprus during its accession negotiations with the
EU.
The talks are scheduled to open Monday, but EU countries are still
bickering over the text of a negotiating framework — the guiding
procedures and principles of the talks — with Austria insisting on a
reference to an eventual “partnership” instead of full membership for
Turkey.
“It is hard to swallow all these… But we should be patient and I
believe that we will overcome many obstacles once the process
starts,” Arinc said.
The speaker stressed that he understood widespread doubts in the EU
over the prospect of admitting a vast, populous country with a
predominantly Muslim faith, but urged European leaders “to keep the
debate away from prejudices and be objective.”

Agence France Presse — English
September 29, 2005 Thursday
EU applying ‘double standards’ to Turkey: parliament speaker
ANKARA
The speaker of the Turkish parliament charged Thursday that “double
standards” were being applied his country’s long-standing membership
bid in an attempt to provoke Ankara to walk away from the talks.
“It seems as if our patience is being tested. Looking at what is
being done to Turkey one sees that there are some quarters that hope
to get rid of us by forcing us to walk away from the (negotiating)
table,” Bulent Arinc said in an interview with NTV television.
“When one compares the treatment of Romania, Bulgaria or Malta to the
different treatment accorded to Turkey one sees … insincerity,
double standards and discrimination,” he added.
Arinc was commenting on a resolution adopted by the European
Parliament Wednesday which urged Ankara to acknowledge that the
Ottomans committed “genocide” against Armenians during World War I
and to recognize Cyprus during its accession negotiations with the
EU.
The resolution came only five days before Turkey is scheduled to
begin membership talks with the pan-European bloc on Monday, but the
start of the negotiations remains uncertain.
EU foreign ministers are to meet Sunday to break a deadlock on
opening the talks after Austria blocked agreement on a negotiation
position by insisting that Turkey be offered something short of full
membership.
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has warned previously that he will turn
his back on the talks if the negotiating framework contains “any
formula or suggestion other than full membership.”
Arinc said: “It is hard to swallow all these… But we should be
patient and I believe that we will overcome many obstacles once the
process starts.”
The speaker stressed that he understood widespread doubts in the EU
over the prospect of admitting a vast, populous country with a
predominantly Muslim faith, but urged European leaders “to keep the
debate away from prejudices and be objective.”
The European Parliament resolution unleashed anger in Turkey where
discussion of the tragic killings in 1915-1917 largely remains taboo
and triggers nationalist sentiments.
“We would like to recall that discussing the issue (the Armenian
massacres) in political platforms would benefit nobody,” the Turkish
foreign ministry said in a statement Thursday.
“Turkey has always argued that controversial chapters in history
should be handled by historians and has opened its archives to the
service of all researchers,” it added.
Armenians claim that up to 1.5 million of their kinsmen were
slaughtered in orchestrated killings under the Ottoman Empire, the
forerunner of modern-day Turkey, but Ankara categorically denies that
a genocide took place.

Associated Press Worldstream
September 29, 2005 Thursday
Turkey, facing EU hurdles, may not attend accession talks
by SUZAN FRASER; Associated Press Writer
ANKARA, Turkey
Turkey will not send its delegation to Luxembourg to open EU
accession talks before officials see the document detailing the
bloc’s negotiating positions, the foreign minister said Thursday.
“No one expects us to go to Luxembourg before seeing the negotiation
framework document,” said Abdullah Gul, who is scheduled to head the
delegation.
“Of course there is a possibility that negotiations will not start,”
Gul said, but he added that “there are intense efforts” to bridge
differences.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, returning from an official visit
to the United Arab Emirates late Thursday, also downplayed tensions,
saying “I don’t think it’s a very serious problem.”
He added that if the document were given on the morning of Oct. 3,
the day negotiations are set to begin, “then on the morning of Oct.
3, we’ll continue.”
Erdogan also said, however, that the EU and Turkey had previous
agreements with respect to membership negotiations, and “it is not
possible for us to accept anything outside of these.”
Predominantly Muslim Turkey’s plans to begin negotiations for
membership in the EU, set to start on Monday, have been thrown into
disarray by the inability of European governments to come to an
agreement on how to proceed.
Austria has been pushing for a privileged partnership for Turkey
rather than full membership, saying its people and others across
Europe do not support bringing Turkey in.
Several countries have also been pushing Turkey to recognize EU
member Cyprus, and the European Parliament called on Turkey this week
to recognize the killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks at the
beginning of the 20th century as genocide.
“We are facing serious difficulties for the start of negotiations,”
Gul said. “Everyone is working hard to overcome these serious
difficulties… We are engaged in intense diplomacy.”
“Everyone knows Turkey’s goals and where Turkey wants to go with
these negotiations,” he said in a reference to Turkish position that
it will not accept anything short of full membership and expects to
start negotiations without new conditions.
While taking a tough position, Gul, speaking at a hastily called
press conference, also appeared keen not to raise tensions with the
EU and told reporters that other countries that recently joined the
25-member bloc also confronted difficulties.
“Of course it is even more difficult for Turkey, because Turkey is
different,” Gul said.
“There’s a heavy agenda in front of us,” Gul said. But he added that
“we still have time to solve these problems.”

Morning Star
September 29, 2005
MEPs delay Turkey customs talks;
The European Parliament, which is frustrated over Turkey’s refusal to
recognise Cyprus, postponed a vote yesterday to ratify Ankara’s
customs union with the EU.
MEPs also called on Ankara to recognise the 1915-1923 killings of
Armenians as a genocide, which Turkey fiercely denies.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan immediately dismissed the
non-binding European Parliament resolution on the killings of
Armenians, saying: “It does not matter whether they took such a
decision or not. We will continue on our way.”
The EU assembly voted 311- 285 to postpone the customs union
ratification vote at the request of conservative MEPs. There were 63
abstentions.
The ballot’s delay will have no effect on the starting date for
Turkey’s accession negotiations, which are set for October 3.
The assembly had already postponed its vote earlier this month, when
the parliament’s foreign affairs committee argued that the customs
union would not work unless Turkey agreed to allow Cyprus to use its
ports or airports.
In July, Turkey signed a deal to widen the customs union with the EU
to include Cyprus and nine other new EU members.
But Ankara said that this did not amount to recognition of Cyprus.
EU governments issued a counter-declaration last week, warning that
failure to recognise Cyprus could paralyse Turkey’s EU entry talks.
European People’s Party chairman Hans-Gert Poettering branded
Turkey’s position “logically and politically unacceptable.”
During the assembly’s debate, Party of European Socialists chairman
Martin Schulz accused the conservatives of not wanting Turkey in the
EU.
Some EU countries advocate the idea of a privileged partnership for
Turkey rather than full membership.
But Ankara insisted yesterday that any deviation from full membership
would be unacceptable.

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
September 29, 2005 Thursday 12:34 AM Eastern Time
Georgia PM to attend inter-govt panel meeting in Yerevan
By Eka Mekhuzla
TBILISI
Georgia-Armenia cooperation in the fields of transport, the power
industry, tourism, and construction will be discussed at a meeting of
the intergovernmental commission on economic cooperation in Yerevan
on Thursday. The meeting will be attended by Georgian Prime Minister
Zurab Nogaideli, an official in Georgia’s Office of the State has
told Itar-Tass.
During a one-day working visit to Yerevan, Nogaideli is also to hold
talks with Armenia’s President Robert Kocharyan, Prime Minister
Andranik Margaryan, and Artur Bagdasaryan, Chairman of the National
Assembly.
In the light of acute shortages of electric power in Georgia in
recent years, Armenia supplies the neighbouring country with up to
160 megawatts of power, or about 10 percent of the entire amount that
Georgia needs.

Agence France Presse — English
September 29, 2005 Thursday 1:49 PM GMT
UN envoy meets Orthodox Church leader in Turkey
ISTANBUL
US special envoy Karen Hughes met the head of the Orthodox Church,
Patriarch Bartholomew I, here on Thursday at the end of a
three-country regional tour, sources from her delgation said.
No statement was issued after the meeting as Hughes, undersecretary
of state for public diplomacy, left for Washington at the end of a
tour that also took her to Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
The aim of the trip was to polish the image, battered by the war in
Iraq, of the United States in the Muslim world.
While in Istanbul, Hughes also met representatives of the Muslim,
Orthodox, Armenian, Jewish and Syriac communities.
One issue likely to have come up in her talks with Bartholomew I was
the fate of the Greek Orthodox seminary on the island of Heybeliada
(Halki in Greek), off Istanbul, that was closed down by Turkey in
1971.
Washington, along with Greece, wants Turkey to re-open the school.
The Turkish government has said on several occasions that it is
looking into ways to allow the school to re-open.
Improving rights for non-Muslim communities is a key requirement
Turkey needs to fulfill in order to become a member of the European
Union, with which it is scheduled to begin accession talks on Monday.
Turkey, 99 percent Muslim, is also home to some 40,000 Armenians,
35,000 Jews, 20,000 Syriacs and 4,000 Orthodox Greeks, who live
mainly in Istanbul, the country’s biggest city.

Imedi TV, Georgia
29 Sep 05
ARMENIAN, GEORGIAN PREMIERS DISMISS CALLS FOR AUTONOMY IN SOUTH
GEORGIA
[Presenter] The demands for autonomy raised by certain groups in the
[southern Georgian] Samtskhe-Javakheti province are not serious,
Armenian Prime Minister [Andranik] Markaryan said after his meeting
with [Georgian Prime Minister] Zurab Noghaideli [in Yerevan today].
[Markaryan, addressing a news briefing, in Russian] These rumours and
discussions that arise at different times and for different reasons
have no grounds. If there are certain issues, they are being
addressed in an expeditious manner.
[Noghaideli, in Russian] The part of the public organizations that
demanded autonomy for Javakheti is just a small part of the
population, to put it straight, and in reality they do not represent
the population. The main thing is what I already told you when we
were visiting the tobacco factory in Yerevan: There will be three
autonomies in Georgia – the Ajarian, the Abkhaz and, in the
Tskhinvali region, the South Ossetian.
From: Baghdasarian

Daily Post (Liverpool)
September 29, 2005, Thursday
EU POSTPONES TURKEY VOTE
THE European Parliament, frustrated over Turkey’s refusal to
recognise Cyprus, postponed a vote yesterday to ratify Turkey’s
customs union with the EU, a requirement of Ankara’s bid for
membership in the 25-member bloc.
Days before the scheduled start of EU membership talks, MEPs also
called on Ankara to recognise the 1915-1923 killings of Armenians as
a genocide, which Turkey vehemently denies.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan immediately dismissed the
non-binding European resolution on the killings of Armenians, saying:
“It does not matter whether they took such a decision or not. We will
continue on our way.”
Armenians say that 1.5 million of their countrymen were killed by
Ottoman Turks.
Turkey denies that the massacres were genocide, saying the death toll
is inflated and Armenians were killed in civil unrest as the Ottoman
Empire collapsed

The Irish Times
September 29, 2005
Turkey told it must admit to Armenian genocide
by Paul Cullen in Strasbourg
TURKEY/EU: Turkey’s hopes of acceding to the EU have suffered a fresh
blow with a demand by the European Parliament that it first
recognises as genocide the killing of Armenians under Ottoman rule
almost a century ago.
Turkey, which vehemently denies there was genocide, claims Armenians
who rebelled at the end of the Ottoman Empire sided with Russian
invaders and were killed along with Turks in intercommunal fighting.
MEPs here also postponed a vote on approving Turkey’s extended
customs union with the EU because of Ankara’s failure to recognise
Cyprus, as well as expressing concerns about human rights issues in
the country. While the EU Commission had called for ratification of
the Ankara Protocol, members voted by 311 to 285 to postpone the
ballot.
Although parliament endorsed the start of negotiations with Turkey on
joining the EU next week, it called on the Commission to assess by
the end of next year whether Turkey has fully implemented the
protocol extending its customs union with the EU to the 10 new
accession states.
During the negotiations, which are open-ended and will not
automatically lead to Turkish membership, Turkey should be kept under
“permanent pressure” to ensure it keeps up the pace of reform, MEPs
resolved. The talks are expected to take at least a decade.
MEPs also expressed concern about the criminal proceedings against
novelist Orhan Pamuk and an article of the Turkish penal code which
criminalises “acts against the fundamental national interest”. The
vote followed an emotional debate in which many deputies, especially
on the right, poured out their hostility to the prospect of the poor,
populous, mainly Muslim nation joining the 25-nation EU. No Irish
MEPs spoke.

Mediamax news agency
29 Sep 05
ARMENIAN PRESIDENT, EU OFFICIAL HIGHLIGHT IMPORTANCE OF
CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES
Yerevan, 29 September: Armenian President Robert Kocharyan and the EU
special representative for the South Caucasus, Heikki Talvitie, today
highlighted the importance of constitutional changes in Armenia and
described them as “new opportunities for the development and
consolidation of democracy in the republic”.
Kocharyan and Talvitie also discussed issues pertaining to Armenia’s
action plan within the framework of the European Union’s New
Neighbourhood programme, the Karabakh settlement and regional
problems, the presidential press service told Mediamax.