BBC News, UK
March 8 2005

European Press Review

[parts omitted]

Police brutality endangers Turkey’s EU bid

Germany’s Der Tagesspiegel warns that a lot can still go wrong with
Turkey’s EU bid after police clamped down on a demonstration to mark
International Women’s Day.

The paper says there is continuing police brutality and torture,
Christian minorities still lack rights, and writers who speak out of
turn on the issue of Armenia are criminalised.

They won’t hesitate to use images from Sunday, and for once they
are right

Berlingske Tidende

“Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government doesn’t seem to
realise that its reforms to date only represent an intermediate stop,
not the final destination,” it says.

The paper acknowledges that on paper Turkey has reached European
standards in many fields, but it adds that the implementation of new
laws is hampered by “strong resistance in the civil service apparatus”.

The EU’s decision to open accession negotiations only marks the
beginning of a process in which Turkish “subjects” should become
“citizens”, the paper argues.

“If this doesn’t happen, then the accession talks will fail,”
it predicts.

Denmark’s Berlingske Tidende says “the version of Turkey which beat
down a women’s demonstration in Istanbul using ridiculously violent
means is not a nation which belongs in the modern European community”.

Worse than the authorities’ brutality, the paper says, is the fact
that “the image of Turkey which the police’s conduct in Istanbul
demonstrated for all of Europe may make it more difficult for the
European Constitutional Treaty to be approved in certain countries,
not least France”.

Turkey’s EU accession and the Treaty may not be related in formal
terms, it goes on, “but the debate on Turkey’s future in the EU is
still high on the agenda among opponents of the Constitution”.

“They won’t hesitate to use images from Sunday, and for once they
are right”, the daily continues.

“The Turkey we saw has no place in the EU. This has to be made crystal
clear to Turkish politicians”, the paper says.