VARIOUS: Crucial talks ahead as countdown to Turkey accession into EU begins

The countdown to a looming crisis between the European Union and Turkey began this week with the European Parliament slamming Turkey for being too slow to reform. It continues on Thursday (September 7) with high level meetings between Turkey's chief negotiator Ali Babacan and EU commissioners including the one in charge of enlargement Olli Rehn. Ali Babacan's visit is expected to reassure the executive European Commission that Turkey is committed to pressing ahead with economic and political reform despite a general election due next year. He will attend technical talks on the sensitive areas of justice and fundamental rights. But the critical European Parliament report by Dutch lawmaker Camiel Eurlings adopted by the parliament's foreign affairs committee on Monday gave a foretaste of the complaints Babacan can expect to face. It censures insufficient progress on freedom of expression and raises concerns over the lot of religious minorities, corruption, and violence against women. "The European Parliament ... regrets the slowing down of the reform process," the draft report said, pointing to what it calls "persistent shortcomings" across a range of areas. It also criticised the unusually high threshold for parliamentary representation, under which a party must score 10 percent nation-wide, making it hard for Kurdish groups to win seats in areas where they have a majority. The Commission is due to issue its regular progress report on Oct. 24 and Rehn has urged Ankara to show tangible improvements in human rights legislation by then, not least to offset a likely negative finding on its behaviour towards Cyprus. In an apparent response, the Turkish parliament has been recalled early from its summer recess in mid-September to enact a package of reforms including a law on the property rights of the Christian minority and on immigrants' rights. However, a controversial article of the penal code that has been used to prosecute writers, journalists and intellectuals for "insulting Turkishness" is not on the parliamentary agenda. According to Can Baydarol, professor at Istanbul's Bilgi University and a founder member of Turkey-EU Platform, there is little chance the government will amend or abolish this article 301. Also in question is whether Ankara has met an obligation to open its ports to ships from Cyprus, which Turkey does not recognise, under a protocol signed last year extending its EU customs union to the 10 new member states. If it has not complied, an EU summit in December is likely to put at least part of the accession talks on hold. With so many sensitive issues at stake, a looming election in Turkey and widespread scepticism in EU member states, Rehn said in the spring that he hoped the EU-Turkey talks would not end up in a train crash. A report issued by the Friends of Europe think-tank on Monday (September 4), said the most likely outcome however was that Turkey's EU bid would be partially derailed. But that could in itself spell the end for the talks in the long run. "You could get a situation where you've slowed down negotiations so much and created such a bad mood between the two sides - and it's already not great - that the whole thing could really start to lose momentum. You've got nationalists in Europe who really don't want Turkey to come in. You've got nationalists in Turkey who really don't want Turkey to join the EU and you could find that such a sort of "derailment" scenario could really encourage nationalists on both sides and effectively disrupt the whole process," EU enlargement expert for Friends of Europe Kirsty Hughes said. EU citizens have also been very vocal in their opposition to Turkey's membership to the European Union. And following two referenda against the EU constitution last year, EU leaders are keen to listen to their constituents. Human rights is often cited by the people of 25-nation bloc as a reason for not including Turkey in their group. Respect of human rights is also a strict requirement as part of the negotiations. A report by Europe's top human rights watchdog said on Wednesday that torture and ill-treatment in Turkish police stations, prisons and psychiatric institutions is declining but that there was still cause for concern. A committee of the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe watchdog, a grouping of 46 countries, reported most people interviewed during a visit to Turkey in December said they had not been physically ill-treated while they were in custody. Eurlings said in his parliamentary report that Turkey had every right to defend itself against acts of violence and terrorism but urged the government not to resort to repression. Hughes also recognises that there are big issues around the treatment of different minorities, especially the Kurds in the southeast. "Turkey has very good new laws prohibiting the ill-treatment and torture and though there are still some cases the human rights bodies mostly say this has very much gone in the right direction. There are big issues around the treatment of different minorities, especially the Kurds in the southeast. And, of course, violence has taken off again in the southeast and that makes it much more difficult from the Turkish point of view, to actually carry on implementing human rights reforms," said Hughes. But she also says the ball started rolling a long time ago and suggests the EU cannot afford to stop it. Decisions will have to be made soon. "Europe had said seven years ago that it could be a candidate country back in 1999. So I think it's either a bit late, or perhaps it's a bit much that some parts of Europe, like in France and Austria, keep debating whether Turkey is European enough to join the EU. The decision has already been taken. If they want to change their minds, perhaps change it and do it now. But you can't negotiate with Turkey for 10 years and all the while say you're not sure about it and you're not sure if it's European enough," she said. If it is concluded that Turkey has not complied with specific obligations, an EU summit in December is likely to put at least part of the accession talks on hold.

ITN Source | September 7, 2006

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