ERDOGAN: "THE EP’S REPORT ISN’T BINDING"

Turkish Press
Sept 6 2006

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday said that the importance
of a controversial new European Parliament Foreign Affairs Commission’s
report shouldn’t be overblown, adding that the report wasn’t
binding. After a meeting with his Albanian counterpart Sali Berisha,
Erdogan told a press conference that the EP decisions weren’t binding,
and added, "We’ve never admitted such a thing about the so-called
Armenian genocide, our stance is clear and sharp.

Expecting this to be changed is fantasy. Moreover, the EP debated
this issue before and didn’t recognize any such genocide." In related
news, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Namik Tan stated that the report
emphasized elements divorced from common sense and objectivity and
that they were expecting this situation to be corrected in a vote
in the full EP at the end of this month. Meanwhile, European Union
Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn’s spokesperson Krisztina Nagy said
that the report would make an important contribution to debates over
Turkey after the vote in the EP’s General Assembly. EU-Turkey Joint
Parliamentary Commission Co-Chair Joost Lagendijk and German Green
Party MP Cem Ozdemir said that the EP report placed a new hurdle in
front of Turkey’s EU bid.