Senior EU lawmaker wants EU delegation to monitor Pamuk trial in
Turkey
.c The Associated Press
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) – A senior EU lawmaker wants the European
Parliament to monitor the Turkish trial of author Orhan Pamuk, who has
been charged with insulting the country’s national character and could
face up to three years in prison.
Joost Lagendijk, the head of the EU parliament’s committee on Turkey,
has asked Parliament President Josep Borrell to send a group of
observers to Istanbul for the trial that starts Dec. 16.
“The charges against Pamuk constitute an infringement of the author’s
right to freedom of expression and contravene both U.N. and EU
conventions on human rights,” said Lagendijk, a Dutch Green deputy.
“When we consider that the implementation of a new penal code this
summer was one of the main conditions for opening accession
negotiations with Turkey, it is essential that a small delegation of
observers attends the trial and determines if the code is compatible
with the charges that have been brought against Pamuk.”
Lagendijk’s call came hours before European Union ambassadors were to
resume talks on adopting a joint position for Turkey’s EU membership
negotiations, which are due to start Oct. 3. Earlier this week, the
ambassadors could not agree on a common response to Ankara’s refusal
to recognize EU member Cyprus.
Pamuk, Turkey’s best-selling and widely translated author, could face
prison for his comments on Turkey’s killing of Armenians and Kurds in
a case that senior EU officials say violates the European Convention
of Human Rights.
In an interview with a Swiss newspaper magazine in February, Pamuk
said “30,000 Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in these lands
and nobody but me dares to talk about it.”
The reference to Armenians relates to killings 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.
Earlier this week, Olli Rehn, the EU official in charge of the bloc’s
expansion, said it was a “provocation” that Turkey chose Dec. 16 to
open the trial.
Dec. 16 is the first anniversary of the EU’s agreement to start
membership talks with Turkey on Oct. 3, and the date clashes with an
EU summit in Brussels.
09/16/05 04:48 EDT