Turkey not seen meeting the EU’s reform targets
ANKARA – Turkey is unlikely to pass major reforms sought by the European Union before an EU progress report in November, though it remains fully committed to joining the bloc, a senior ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lawmaker said yesterday. Murat Mercan, new head of the parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said the EU must show understanding for Turkey, which has just emerged from a lengthy election period, and warned too much criticism of Ankara’s record could be counterproductive. «If laws are not passed in the time expected by the European Commission, it is not due to a lack of desire or commitment on the part of Turkey, but because of problems of timing,» Mercan told Reuters in an interview in parliament. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, bolstered by his AKP’s big victory in July polls, has vowed to accelerate EU reforms, but parliament only reconvenes next Monday after a summer recess both shortened and delayed by two elections. After the parliamentary poll, lawmakers elected a new president, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, in August. Diplomats say Turkey’s parliament will only start functioning at full tilt from mid-October after a holiday marking the end of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. «I am sure the EU Commission will take these problems (of timing) into consideration in its progress report,» said Mercan. A bill helping non-Muslim minority religious foundations should pass «as soon as the parliamentary agenda allows,» Mercan said, though maybe not in time for the annual progress report. Turkey’s previous president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, vetoed that bill, but Gul strongly backs the EU process and is expected to sign it into law without delay once it has been resubmitted. Mercan confirmed previous signals from Erdogan and other ministers that Turkey would not rush to change or scrap Article 301 of its penal code, which makes it a crime to insult Turkish national identity or state institutions. Nationalist prosecutors have used the article to press charges against an array of writers, journalists and scholars, including Turkey’s Nobel Literature Laureate Orhan Pamuk. The EU says the article curtails freedom of expression and must be dropped. But Ankara, noting that most cases, including the one against Pamuk, have eventually been dropped, says the real problem lies in the mentality of a conservative judiciary. «The main problem is not the content of Article 301 but its implementation. A law can be changed overnight but it takes much longer to change people’s ways of thinking,» said Mercan, adding that the government would continue to monitor the implementation of the article and would change it if this was deemed necessary. No to Cyprus Mercan also made clear Turkey would not open its ports and airports to traffic from Cyprus, another key EU demand, before the bloc honors a pledge to lift trade restrictions against breakaway Turkish Cypriots in the north of the divided island. Brussels could improve Turks’ increasingly skeptical view of the EU by giving Ankara a target date for membership, he said. «In both Turkey and the EU there are circles that believe Turkey will never actually become a member. Giving us a target date would silence these people,» he said. «Turkey is ready to move ahead in all areas of the relationship with a constructive approach but the EU must also show a constructive approach.»
