Brussels, 18/10/2000 (Agence Europe) - The President of the European Parliament delegation for EU/Turkey relations, the Green Daniel Cohn-Bendit, and Akim Birdal and Husnu Ondul, honorary President and President of the Turkish Human Rights Association (IHD), have this Wednesday presented to the press, in Brussels, the IHD report "The Copenhagen Political Criteria and Turkey", in which the Association indicates what, according to it, should change in Turkey so that it may fulfil the Copenhagen criteria for EU accession.
Mr Cohn-Bendit recalled that the European Parliament would adopt the Morillon report in Turkish accession request during the November plenary session (from the 23 to 27 November: for the report, see EUROPE of 12 October, p.12).
"Our colleagues in the Turkish Parliament," said Cohen-Bendit, "have promised us for this autumn", the adoption of a series of laws concerning, notably, the freedom of expression and organisation and on the practice of torture (an official report adopted by the Turkish Parliament recognises that torture is widespread in the country's prisons, he added).
As for Akim Birdal, he said that the "Copenhagen criteria are the criteria that our Association has set itself for fourteen years now", and that, for the IDH, these criteria must anyway be respected in Turkey, whether or not it wanted to join the EU. The prisons are bursting with prisoners, "let's begin with a general amnesty", he exclaimed. Mr. Birdal also placed emphasis on: - a rapid reform of legislation on the freedom of expression; - the abolition of a series of so-called "anti-terrorism" articles of law; - Turkey's signing and ratifying Protocol 6 (on the abolition of the death penalty) of the European Convention on Human Rights. Democratisation and the respect of human rights in Turkey will have to lead to a settlement of the Kurdish issue, he said, noting: "there is no more war, weapons have been silenced, Turkey has been accepted as candidate, there is a period of calm between Turkey and Greece - the first in 45 years - the preconditions preventing democratisation no longer exist", and the Kurds should be able to live in Turkey, "with their language, their identity". "The Kurdish problem is no longer a Kurdish issue, but a Turkish, European, regional, even Caucasian one", said Birdal, adding: the "Zanas" (Leyla Zana, the Kurdish parliamentarian winner of the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize, and her husband), with whom he shared a prison until not long ago, had to be freed.
As for Husnu Ondul, he said that the IDH Report, that had been handed to the Turkish Government and Commissioner Verheugen in July, stipulates that 421 Articles in 77 Turkish laws need revising, and that the IHD had handed the Government a thirteen-page report on 13 September on the European Commission's report and on the answer Ankara would have to provide to comply with it. "We are proposing," he said, "the opening of a debate, that should end on 31 March 2001, on a series of important decisions (notably, general amnesty, review of the laws on the freedom of expression and organisation, the abolition of the law of exception in Kurdish regions and assurances of the return of displaced refugees to their homes) and that it would be followed by a second phase in which, by end-2001, 75 Articles of the Constitution would be revised.