EU OFFICIAL ACCUSES TURKEY OF PROVOCATION
By Jan Sliva
The Associated Press
09/13/05 17:26 EDT
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) – The official in charge of European Union
expansion accused Turkey of provocation on Tuesday, saying it was no
coincidence that the trial of a Turkish novelist would clash with a
EU summit.
Olli Rehn, the EU commissioner overseeing expansion plans, said the
prosecution of author Orhan Pamuk violated a human rights convention.
He also said it would take at least 10-15 years to finish negotiations
with Turkey on its possible accession to the bloc, and warned Ankara
that the pace of the talks will depend on how quickly it recognizes
Cyprus.
“The Pamuk case raises serious questions about the interpretation of
Turkey’s new penal code. The Dec. 16 date can’t be just a coincidence,
it has to be a provocation,” Rehn told the European Parliament’s
foreign affairs committee. Dec. 16 is also the date of an EU summit.
Rehn added that the case violated the European Convention on Human
Rights.
Pamuk has been charged with insulting Turkey’s national character and
could face prison for his comments on Turkey’s killing of Armenians
and Kurds.
“Thirty-thousand Kurds and one million Armenians were killed in these
lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it,” Pamuk was quoted as
saying in an interview with a Swiss newspaper magazine in February.
The “one million Armenians” refers to Armenians killed by Ottoman
Turks around the time of World War I, which Armenians and several
other nations recognize as the first genocide of the 20th century.
Turkey vehemently denies that a genocide took place, saying the
death toll is inflated and Armenians were killed in a civil war as
the Ottoman Empire collapsed, eventually giving way to the Turkish
Republic in 1923.
Turkey, which has been trying to improve its human rights record
as it vies for EU membership, is extremely sensitive about both the
Armenian and Kurdish issues, and the new Turkish penal code makes it
a crime to denigrate Turkey’s national identity.
The code – adopted at the EU’s insistence – was debated earlier this
year and freedom of speech advocates said the clause on national
identity was too vague and could lead to the imprisonment of artists,
scholars and journalists.
Rehn said the European Commission will continue to closely monitor
human rights issues in Turkey, but still expects the accession
negotiations to start on Oct. 3 as scheduled, despite EU government
grumbling over Turkey’s refusal to recognize Cyprus.
In August, Turkey signed a customs protocol extending its existing
customs arrangements with the 25-member EU to the 10 new members
including Cyprus. But it accompanied its signature with a separate
declaration saying this did not mean it was formally recognizing the
divided Mediterranean island.
Rehn said formal recognition “was not a precondition” to start the
Oct. 3 talks. “However, it is regrettable that Turkey had to issue
a declaration accompanying the protocol,” he said.
The European Court of Human Rights – based in Strasbourg, France –
ordered Turkey on Tuesday to pay more than $85,932 to the relatives
of two suspected members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party
who were killed in a police raid in 1996.
An anti-terrorist squad shot Omer Bayram and Ridvan Altun in an
operation which the court said violated three articles of the human
rights convention.