Brussels, 23/09/2005 (Agence Europe) - At a conference on 'The EU, Turkey and the Kurds', organised in Brussels on 20 September by the GUE/NGL group at the European Parliament (United Left/Nordic Green Left), the GUE/NGL President Francis Wurtz called for fair treatment of Turkey's Kurdish minority to be made one of the 'non-negotiable aspects of the upcoming Turkish accession talks'. Speaking during a debate on EU-Turkey accession talks, Feleknas Uca (MEP of Kurdish origin) stressed that 'in the lead-up to the beginning of accession negotiations with turkey, repression by the Turkish military and police has increased on the Kurdish population.' Italian MEP Vittorio Agnoletto, Coordinator of the Kurdish Friendship Group at the European Parliament, said that 'the EU demands that Turkey respect the judgement of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and initiate a new, fair, and free trial for Ocalan (former Kurdish PKK leader). Agnoletto slammed the 10% threshold in the Turkish electoral law that prevents Kurds from having their own parliamentarians, and the dissolution of the teachers' trade unions that defended the right of everyone to speak in their own language at school as well as in Turkish. While urging the Turkish authorities to respect the rights of the Kurds, Agnoletto and the GUE/NGL group called on Kurdish representatives in Turkey to turn their backs once and for all on armed opposition and to get more active in working towards a relaunch of the political process.