Give the people their voice or never join EU, Turks told

Date: 31/01/02

By David Cronin

A HIGH-LEVEL EU team has warned Turkey that it must eliminate restrictions on free speech if it ever hopes to launch formal talks on Union accession.

Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit was told that changes to contentious clauses in the Turkish penal code were too piecemeal to assuage EU concerns on the country's human rights record.

The message was delivered during a meeting he held with Karen Fogg, head of the European Commission's Ankara office, and the Spanish and Danish ambassadors to Turkey, Manuel de la Camara and Christian Happe.

Human rights campaigners say Articles 159 (insults to the Turkish state) and 312 (incitement to hatred) in the penal code have been used as a pretext for arresting journalists and closing media outlets.

But left-leaning Ecevit has come under fierce pressure from the more conservative party in his ruling coalition - the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) - not to change them significantly.

As a result, he has only agreed to minor modifications that some analysts fear could actually widen their scope. 'The text of the new amendments contains ambiguous legal definitions,' said an Ankara-based EU official. 'They will not lead to many improvements in practice and could possibly lead to some deteriorations.'

Turkey's EU ambassador Nihat Akyol recently declared it vital that a date for his country to begin formal accession talks be set this year.

But the official said the changes - part of a so-called 'mini-democratisation' package - will make it more difficult for the Union to meet that demand.

'After Laeken, there was a sense of euphoria here,' the official added. (Belgian premier Guy Verhofstadt declared at December's summit that the prospect of accession talks with Turkey had been brought forward.)

'But the mini-package is a big disappointment. It goes in the opposite direction to the Copenhagen criteria. That makes it very difficult to talk about dates and things like that.'

Recent clampdowns on media freedom in the country have included the confiscation of magazine Idea Politika for carrying an unflattering article about the Turkish army and temporary bans on broadcasts by the BBC World Service and Deutsche Welle for 'threatening national security'.

The Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV), an Istanbul think-tank, also argues that the amendments are counter-productive.

'They would leave decisions on what punishments are to be applied at the discretion of the judiciary,' said TESEV's Ali Carkoglu. 'And that's precisely what should be avoided.

'Although on paper the judiciary has all the autonomy in the world, the practice is that it can always be manipulated by executive office.'

A high-level EU team has warned Turkey that it must eliminate restrictions on free speech if it ever hopes to launch formal talks on Union accession.