Brussels, 19/02/2002 (Agence Europe) - The European Commissioner responsible for enlargement issues, Günter Verheugen, wished to meet the head of the Turkish mission with the EU, Nihat Akyol, on Tuesday, in order to seek reassurance concerning the security of the Union delegation and its staff in Turkey. The meeting comes after an electronic message from the delegation had been pirated.
On 8 February, the president of the small Labour Party (IP, not represented in Parliament), Dogu Perincek, had distributed to the Turkish press large extracts of internal and external electronic correspondence from the EU representation in Ankara. The correspondence gave an assessment of certain Turkish officials.
The delegation, that has the rank of embassy, had asked the authorities to prevent the publication of this mail, obtained illegally, and the spread and publication of which was against the law. Deputy Prime Minister Devlet Bahceli, whose Nationalist Action Party is member of the governmental coalition, considered that this leak was a "provocation by certain foreign circles that do not want Turkey in the European Union", but that "there was in no case responsibility on the part of a Turkish institution". Gunter Verheugen's spokesman, Jean-Christoph Filori, said on Tuesday that the Commission had asked the Turkish authorities to stop the dissemination of e-mails, which are supposed to be protected by the Vienna Convention. He added that the affair would doubtless demand a decision by the courts.
A complaint was, moreover, lodged in this affair on Monday by two lawyers, against the Commission's representative in Ankara, Karen Fogg. The two lawyers complained to the General Prosecutor of the Republic of Turkey for the divulging of confidential information. They demand that those responsible, "including Karen Fogg", be tried for these acts.