Turkey ordered to make changes for EU entry

The European Commission has threatened Turkey with the possible suspension of membership talks unless it does more to protect human rights and implements a customs pact with EU member Cyprus.

The commission decided against recommending the immediate suspension of entry talks with Turkey, commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said yesterday.

“We decided to give a chance for the diplomatic efforts to find a solution,” he said.

But Ankara must forge ahead with political and economic reforms “with full determination” and open its ports and airports to Cypriot goods before EU leaders meet at a December 14 and 15 summit in Brussels, he said in a statement.

“Failure to implement its obligations in full will affect the overall progress in the negotiations,” Barroso said, adding that the bloc now expected “words to lead to deeds as soon as possible”.

Turkey, however, insisted that Cyprus was a political issue that should have no bearing on its entry negotiations.

The Turkish government said in a statement: “The Cyprus problem is a political one and is not an obligation for the negotiation process, which is a technical one.”

The European Commission, issuing a key progress report on EU membership talks a year after opening entry negotiations with Turkey, criticised Ankara’s human rights record on torture and freedom of expression, and the pace of political reforms.

It also cited a “slowdown” in its overall reform agenda.

EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said Turkey was not backtracking on reforms but has not kept up the pace needed to qualify for membership.

“Turkey has continued political reforms even though the pace has slowed down during the past year,” he said.

New anti-torture laws went into effect, but cases of torture are “still being reported”, Rehn’s report said, adding that the bloc was particularly concerned about reports of violations in south-eastern Turkey, where the Kurdish minority has rioted in recent months.

The EU also urged Turkey to do more to boost the rights of non-Muslim religious groups.

Turkish leaders acknowledged falling short of EU demands on expanding freedoms and political reform, but vowed to push ahead with reform with the goal of joining the bloc.

“For us, the EU process maintains its importance,” Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters in Ankara.

“We have not yet achieved all of the (EU membership criteria),” he said. “Our aim is to achieve the maximum possible. Our struggle will continue.”

He rejected the suspension of entry talks, but said resolution of the Cyprus issue depends on leaders on the Mediterranean island, not on Ankara.

Cyprus has been divided into a Greek-Cypriot south and internationally isolated Turkish-Cypriot north since 1974, when Turkish forces invaded the island in response to an attempted coup by officers supporting union with Greece.

Turkey, the only government to recognise the breakaway Turkish-Cypriot state in the north, has refused to extend its customs union to include Cyprus and nine other EU member states that joined in 2004, saying it will only implement the deal when an international embargo on the north ends.

“We have said: ’Don’t ever expect us to open our ports and airports until the isolation of the Turkish Cypriot state is lifted,'" Erdogan said yesterday.

Britain said, however, that it is up to Turkey to make a move.

“Turkey must implement its obligation to all (EU) member states. If it fails to do so, the EU must act,” Britain’s minister for Europe, Geoff Hoon, said yesterday.

France’s foreign minister Philippe Douste-Blazy agreed, saying the EU should rethink its timetable for Turkey’s entry bid if it refuses to recognise Cyprus.

“If by the end of the year Turkey still does not recognise the 25 member states, notably including Cyprus, then it appears to me necessary to rethink the timetable for the adhesion of Turkey,” he said in Paris.

Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos expressed satisfaction with the report, saying during a trip to Croatia that “it has many positive points”.

Cypriot government spokesman Christodoulos Pashiardis said the report “records in a clear and objective way that Turkey so far has not fulfilled the European obligations it has assumed”.

The EU report also criticised the continueditical role played by Turkey’s military, and highlighted “serious economic and social problems” facing the Kurdish minority.

It also cited Turkey’s resistance to amending part of its penal code, which sets out punishments for insulting the Turkish republic, its officials or “Turkishness”, a law that has been used to bring charges against dozens of authors, journalists, publishers and scholars.

The European Commission report comes amid growing opposition across Europe to allowing the poor, predominantly Muslim, nation of 71 million people to join the expanding EU.