NTV MSNBC, Turkey
Feb 16 2007
Babacan: EU can’t demand a date for change to Turkish law
The minister said that Turkey’s accession process was being made
harder than that for other candidate countries.
Güncelleme: 19:15 TSÝ 16 Þubat 2007 CumaBRUSSELS – The European Union
does not have the right to demand Turkey set a timetable to amend a
controversial article of the Turkish penal code seen by many as
limiting free speech, Turkish Economy Minister Ali Babacan said
Friday.
Babacan, who is also Turkey’s chief negotiator with the EU, was
speaking in Brussels, where he is holding talks with EU officials on
Turkey’s accession process.
It was up to Turkey to decide when and in what form any amendments to
article 301 would be made, he said.
Article 301 of the Turkish penal code covers the crime of insulting
Turkish identity and has been used to prosecute a number of leading
Turkish writers, including Nobel prize winner Orhan Pamuk and Hrant
Dink, the Turkish-Armenian journalist gunned down in Istanbul last
month.
Babacan also said that a number of obstacles were being laid in
Tukey’s path to full membership of the EU.
In particular, the Cyprus dispute was being used as a pretext by the
EU to slow Turkey’s membership process. While other EU candidate
countries had `sailed with the wind behind them’ during their
negotiation processes, Turkey, was forced to `sail against the wind’,
he said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
