BRUSSELS SET TO GIVE TURKEY MORE TIME ON CYPRUS
By Mark Beunderman

EU Observer, Belgium
Nov 7 2006

The European Commission is unlikely to recommend a partial suspension
of Turkey’s EU membership talks over the Cyprus issue in a key report
on Wednesday, with individual commissioners reportedly divided over
the matter.

The Financial Times wrote on Tuesday (7 November) that Brussels is
set to postpone a recommendation on whether or not to freeze the
talks until a later date ahead of an EU leaders summit in December.

The commission had been considering whether to already make this
recommendation in Wednesday’s progress report on Turkey, according
to the UK daily.

But a draft report endorsed by chiefs of the commissioners in a
meeting on Monday merely says that "The commission will make relevant
recommendations ahead of the December European Council."

The paper writes that the commission itself is divided over the
strategy towards Turkey, which launched EU accession talks last year,
but still refuses to open its ports and airports to trade from Cyprus.

The Cypriot, Greek and French commissioners – whose countries are
among the most sceptical about Turkish membership – have argued
Brussels should already on Wednesday propose concrete consequences
for Ankara’s defiant stance.

But other members of the EU executive – including commission chief Jose
Manuel Barroso and enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn – reportedly
want to give more space for the Finnish EU presidency to broker a
deal between Turkey and Cyprus before the December summit.

The draft still needs to be rubber-stamped by commissioners on
Wednesday.

Debate in Germany, Italy The divisions within the commission reflect
a similar rift within the German ruling coalition which is being
highlighted by German media.

Edmund Stoiber, the leader of the Bavarian conservatives and a staunch
opponent of Turkish EU membership, has urged a halt to the talks,
but social democrat members of the German government – notably foreign
minister Frank Walter Steinmeier – have said that "everything" needs
to be done to find a compromise before the end of the year.

Meanwhile, Italian prime minister Romano Prodi has warned against
stopping the negotiations with Turkey altogether, telling the Financial
Times that the process will take time but "certainly you must not
stop it."

"There is an idea in some parts of Europe to stop it all," he said.

"But I think this is a great historical challenge."

Free speech concession In another development, the European Commission
on Monday cautiously welcomed a fresh concession by Turkish prime
minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on freedom of expression – an issue
which is set to be one of the main concerns in Wednesday’s progress
report along with the Cyprus issue.

Mr Erdogan over the weekend said his government is willing to revise or
lift the notorious article 301 of Turkey’s penal code, which penalises
insults against "Turkishness".

"We expect this stated intention to be followed by concrete deeds and
we are thus waiting for concrete decisions," a commission spokeswoman
said.

On the basis of article 301, charges were brought against several
journalists and novelists who raised the Kurdish issue or the Armenian
genocide including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk.

Turkish NGOs have in the past few weeks pressed the government to
reform the article.