EU LAWMAKERS SLAM TURKISH REFORM SLOWDOWN
By Darren Ennis

Reuters, UK
Sept 4 2006

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) – European Union lawmakers approved
a highly critical report on Monday accusing Turkey of dragging its
heels on reforms, marking the start of looming crisis between the EU
and Ankara over its accession bid.

The EU assembly’s foreign affairs committee voted through a paper
which slammed Turkey for not living up to the commitments it gave when
it received the green light last October to start talks on joining
the bloc.

"The European parliament … regrets the slowing down of the reform
process," the report said, pointing to what it called "persistent
shortcomings" in a range of areas.

The lawmakers said Turkey had shown "insufficient progress" in
the areas of freedom of expression, religious and minority rights,
women’s rights and law enforcement since EU leaders agreed to start
accession talks 11 months ago.

The report urged Ankara to recognise Cyprus and urged it to "take
concrete steps for the normalisation of bilateral relations with the
Republic as soon as possible".

Experts fear the niggling dispute over Cyprus and mutual public
disenchantment could lead at worst to a breakdown in accession talks
with the strategic, Muslim candidate country. But the report stopped
short of mentioning that scenario.

"We are not saying that we are not still committed to the talks or
that we do not want Turkey to join the EU," said Dutch conservative
Camiel Eurlings, who scripted the report.

"But we are sending a clear signal to Turkey that it must move quickly
with its reforms," he told the committee.

However the report’s demand that, as a precondition of membership,
Ankara acknowledge that Ottoman Turkey committed genocide against
Armenians in World War One — a suggestion it strongly rejects —
will raise tensions further.

Any country wishing to join the 25-member bloc requires the approval
of both the European parliament and the agreement of all member states.

ELECTION PRESSURE

The report will go before a full parliament sitting at the end of
the month and is likely to be raised when chief Turkish EU negotiator
Ali Babacan visits Brussels from Wednesday.

Babacan will try to reassure EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn
and other EU officials that Turkey is committed to pressing ahead with
economic and political reform despite national elections due next year.

The European parliament has never sought to veto any past accession,
but it has been effective in pressuring EU hopefuls to speed up
reforms in previous enlargement rounds.

However the conservative EPP-ED, the assembly’s largest political
group, still favours "privileged partnership" with Turkey rather than
full membership.

The report censures insufficient progress on freedom of expression
and raises concerns over the lot of religious minorities, corruption,
and violence against women.

It also criticised the unusually high threshold for parliamentary
representation, under which a party must score 10 percent nationwide,
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 October
24. 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.

The Commission’s report will assess whether Ankara has met an
obligation to open ports to ships from Cyprus, which Turkey does not
recognise, under a protocol signed last year extending its EU customs
union to the bloc’s 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.

(Additional reporting by Hatice Aydogdu in Ankara, Osman Senkul and
Paul de Bendern in Istanbul and Paul Taylor in Brussels)