Union pressure may yet bear fruit in Turkey’s rite of passage

Date: 06/05/04

THE European Commission is set to recommend, in a landmark report this autumn, that accession negotiations be opened with Turkey, 41 years after Ankara first applied for EU membership. As the Union's government leaders are likely to give the green light, at their December summit, negotiations are expected to start next year.

There are compelling reasons why EU leaders want to begin accession talks with Turkey.

By reaching out to a mostly Muslim country with almost 70 million inhabitants, the Union's leaders would be proving that pluralism is not just a value to which they pay lip-service, but something they actually cherish. They would also be sending a message to Osama bin Laden and his fellow extremists that there is no reason why Islam and Christianity cannot coexist peacefully.

And they would be rewarding Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the constructive stance he has adopted on the failed attempt to reunify Cyprus and on domestic political reform. Nevertheless, fundamental questions about democracy and human rights still need to be addressed.

An example of the continuing repression by some agents of the Turkish state occurred on Saturday

(1 May). More than 180 demonstrators were arrested after undertaking a march in support of Kurdish rights in the south-eastern Diyarbakir province.

Among those detained was Reyhan Yalcindag, vice-president of the Turkish Human Rights Association. "We attach a very big importance to being a member of the EU," she told European Voice. "But we do not believe that this is possible without respecting basic human rights and recognizing ethnic minorities. The mentality and character of Turkey must change in order to become a member of the EU."

In 1984, Turkey effectively went to war against the Kurdish population living in its south-east. This led to tens of thousands of deaths, the destruction of around 3,500 villages and the uprooting of some 2-3 million people.

Twenty years later, the plight of the Kurds was again highlighted last month when a state security court decided to prolong the imprisonment of Leyla Zana, Selim Sadak, Hatip Dicle and Orhan Dogan. These four former members of the Turkish parliament were jailed for 15 years in December 1994 for membership of the illegal guerrilla group the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), even though human rights campaigners have maintained their activities have been consistently non-violent.

The ruling has now been appealed to the Court of Cassation. Yet it remains a bone of contention between Ankara and the EU institutions as it has become a cause célèbre for MEPs, who in 1995 awarded Zana the Sakharov Prize for defending human rights.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has cited evidence that the right to peaceful protest in Turkey is "still frequently curtailed". In July last year, a new legal provision was introduced, stating that public gatherings could only be banned when there is an "imminent threat" of a crime being committed. In the intervening nine months, however, more than 100 protests have been broken up by the police, who have been accused of beating protestors and spraying them with pepper gas in one-third of those cases.

"Police violence against demonstrators and unwarranted restrictions on freedom of assembly aren't compatible with Turkey's EU bid and its goals on human rights," said HRW's Rachel Denber. "The government needs to affirm the right to protest before the issue begins to tarnish Turkey's progress towards EU membership."

This week Turkey's Grand National Assembly, its single chamber parliament, started its deliberations over a package of fresh proposals aimed at removing the key obstacles to opening accession talks. Of paramount importance are the measures to accept that EU and international law is superior to Turkish national law, to abolish the much-maligned state security courts and to write the scrapping of the death penalty into the constitution.

The package is also designed to place checks on the inordinate power of the army in political affairs. Military spending is due to be subject to scrutiny by the national court of auditors and the National Security Council would no longer have a representative on the boards overseeing broadcasting and university education.

With both the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) in favour of introducing reforms sought by the EU, the prognosis for the reforms being adopted is good. The CHP, in particular, has backed the idea of removing legal provisions, which allow those convicted of politically motivated offences to be denied rights offered to "common" criminals. At present, Turkey has some 2,000 political prisoners and they are ineligible for such programmes as early release for good behaviour.

While the reforms are likely to be applauded by the Brussels institutions, Turkey watchers predict there could be resistance to implementing them from conservative elements in the security and legal establishment.

"This is not just about changing laws," says Senem Aydin from the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS). "You also have to change the mindset of the judiciary, the public prosecutor, the police and security forces. The best way to do this is through EU help with training and education. This is already happening but we will need to wait for a while for it to bear full fruit."

Dutch Green Joost Lagendijk, one of the most active MEPs on EU-Turkey relations, comments: "We don't know how strong the resistance [to reforms] is in the judiciary. But it is even stronger than that of the army and it is more difficult to monitor. In the army, if the top guy says "march this way", then everybody is marching that way. But you have thousands of independent judges and some are very old-fashioned. There may even be provocations from that side in the run-up to the December [EU summit] decision. They could be deliberately wanting to show it is the judges that are in control and not politicians in Brussels or Ankara."

Lagendijk believes, though, that pressure from EU has already led to positive reforms and that the Union should continue pushing for a greater respect for human rights in the country. While some powerful forces in western European countries - particularly President Jacques Chirac's allies in France and the German Christian Democrats - have shown antipathy to Turkey's EU ambitions, human rights groups and other thorns in the side of the Ankara establishment are broadly in favour. Leyla Zana has gone so far as indicating she would rather be in prison in a Turkey negotiating for EU membership than free in one with no prospects of entry.

The European Council in December 2004 is likely to agree that accession negotiations with Turkey can begin. A report recommending such a move is due to be published in Autumn 2004.

https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/countries/detailed-country-information/turkey_en https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/countries/detailed-country-information/turkey_en

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