Turkey's parliament speaker urges lawyer who refuses to eat to end protest

ANKARA, Turkey: Turkey's parliament speaker on Tuesday called on a lawyer who has refused food for 265 days in protest of high security prisons to immediately end his protest, promising a review of prison conditions in the new year.
Parliament speaker Bulent Arinc met with family members of Behic Asci, who has been refusing solid foods — but not liquids — since April, 5 to protest conditions in the maximum security prisons, where inmates are kept in one- or three-person cells. Human rights groups say prisoners are sometimes kept in solitary confinement and the cells provide very little opportunity for interaction between prisoners, leaving them isolated and vulnerable.
"Behic Asci must end this struggle which he calls a 'death fast,' that has been continuing for 265 days," Arinc said. "We want this death fast to end so that he may regain his health."
"If this is done, I want to say that in the first week of January, a delegation will work on the issue," Arinc promised.
Asci's mother Fazilet Erdogan however, doubted Arinc's pledge would convince her son.
"My son is as obstinate as I am," Erdogan said. "I don't think he will end the death fast until the isolation (of prisoners) is lifted."
Scores of prisoners or their supporters have died in hunger strikes protesting conditions at high security prisons since October 2000 — when authorities began moving prisoners from large wards housing up to 100 people to one- or three-inmate cells. Authorities said the large wards were unruly and had become recruiting centers for terrorist groups.
The protesters drink tea, sugared and salted water and take minerals to help prolong the strike.
The protest is being led by the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP-C, a banned Marxist group which has claimed responsibility for a number of assassinations and bombings since the 1970s.

Turkey and the European Union / The ever lengthening road

Dec 7th 2006 | ISTANBUL
From The Economist print edition

“FIRST they tied our arms, now they are going to tie our legs.” The words of a top Turkish official sum up the gloom in Ankara as European Union leaders prepare for next week's summit in Brussels, where they will once again argue over Turkey. Whatever the outcome, Turkey's prospects of being the EU's first mainly Muslim member have never seemed so bleak.

Turkey's long-delayed membership talks opened almost 15 months ago amid much fanfare. “Hello Europe” read one newspaper headline. But the talks soon ran into trouble over Turkey's rejection of the EU's demand that it fulfil its legal obligation to open its ports and airports to traffic from Cyprus (ie, the internationally recognised Greek-Cypriot republic). The Turks rebuffed a deadline of December 6th, insisting that they will not give way until the Europeans fulfil their own promise to end the trade embargo on Turkish northern Cyprus.

The European Commission has proposed the suspension of eight of the 35 chapters in the membership talks. This week the French president, Jacques Chirac, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, endorsed this plan, and also called for a full review of Turkey's progress in early 2009. “We don't want to set any kind of ultimatums,” said Ms Merkel, who wants Turkey to accept a “privileged partnership”, not full membership. “But we want the commission to say to us what has been achieved and how we could proceed.”

Late into the week, negotiations continued under the Finnish EU presidency. A Turkish offer to open one port and one airport to Cyprus seems unlikely to work as it is clearly dependent on a reciprocal offer by the Greek-Cypriots. If no compromise is found, little progress will be made. Relations will worsen if Nicolas Sarkozy becomes France's president next spring: unlike Mr Chirac, he is fiercely against Turkish membership.

Turkey's hopes are now pinned on the Americans. President Bush is expected to embark on a round of telephone diplomacy this week. He may secure a reduction in the number of frozen chapters. But regardless of their number, suspended chapters can be reopened only with the unanimous approval of all EU members. This “leaves the door open for them to impose further intolerable conditions on us,” comments the top Turkish official.

Most Turks believe that Turkey's detractors simply do not want a large, Muslim country in their midst. Their aim is to wear down Turkey's resistance and induce it to walk away. Yet the mildly Islamist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, says he will not fall into that trap. “Forcing Turkey to abandon the [negotiating] table would be a dreadful mistake; Europe, not Turkey would stand to lose,” he said this week. He added that Turkey would pursue its membership goal with determination and, moreover, that it had a plan B and C.

Nobody seems to know what such plans might entail, but government sources hint that consultations with the EU over, say, Afghanistan and Iraq, or on drugs and human trafficking, may be slowed down. Instead Turkey will try to repair relations with America that remain fraught over Iraq, especially over the increasingly autonomous Kurds in northern Iraq. It will also build up its role in the Middle East, the Caucasus and the oil-rich former Soviet central Asian countries.

Most Turks believe that Turkey's detractors simply do not want a large, Muslim country in their midst

Cocking a snook at the Europeans could help Mr Erdogan's AK party to win votes in parliamentary elections due next November. Public support for the EU has already dropped to well below 50%, down from highs of 80% or more two years ago. Mr Erdogan will also take heart from the economy, which has grown by an annual average of 7% since 2001, four times as fast as the EU's. The markets seem unfazed by the rows over EU membership; the Turkish lira rose against the dollar this week.

But economic progress hinges on whether Mr Erdogan sticks with his IMF-imposed reforms. It may also depend on whether he decides to become president when the incumbent, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, retires in May. Turkey's militantly secular generals recoil at the thought of both the presidency and the government being run by Islamists. How far they might go to stop this remains a vexing question. The EU membership talks have provided the most effective rein on the generals so far.

Just as ominously, Mr Erdogan's claim that he will continue with political reforms, regardless of what happens over the EU, is beginning to look shaky. Article 301 of the penal code, under which Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's best-known novelist, was prosecuted last year, remains on the books. Human-rights abuses against the country's 14m Kurds have been curbed but by no means stopped altogether.

Meanwhile, Mr Erdogan's tired assertion that rejecting Turkey would provoke a “clash of civilisations” by sending a message to the Muslim world that the EU is a Christian club, is exaggerated. “Turkey has no real connection to the Arab world, so whether Turkey gets into Europe or not doesn't really matter to the ordinary guy in Amman or Riyadh,” says Yusuf Al Sharif, a Palestinian commentator. “There isn't even an Arab cultural centre in Turkey.” Mr Erdogan's overtures to Iran and Syria (he visited both countries this week) have less to do with Muslim solidarity than with a common desire shared by all three to prevent the emergence of an independent Kurdish state in Iraq.

In short, both sides in this dispute need to regain some perspective. Turkey is right to feel cheated over Cyprus (the Greek-Cypriots won EU membership even though they voted in April 2004 against the UN's Annan plan to reunite the island, whereas the Turkish-Cypriots remain isolated even though they voted in favour). But it must also show that it is sincere about pursuing EU-inspired reforms. If the EU is to regain its moral authority with the millions of Turks who long to have a full-blown modern democracy, it needs to prove that membership of its club is not only the best way to achieve that goal—but also one that is still genuinely on offer.

The Turkish train crash

Nov 30th 2006
From The Economist print edition

MELANCHOLY is Istanbul's defining characteristic, writes Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's Nobel prize-winning novelist. And melancholy has now descended on the country's relationship with Europe. “Almost everyone I know has lost heart,” says Soli Ozel, a political scientist at Istanbul's Bilgi University who wants Turkey to join the European Union.

His disenchantment is justified. Turkey's membership talks are on the edge of collapse. The EU gave the Turks until December 6th to open their ports and airports to traffic from Cyprus (ie, the Greek-Cypriot republic). Turkey refuses to do this unless the Europeans lift what amounts to their trade embargo on the (Turkish-Cypriot) north. The current Finnish presidency of the EU has failed to find a compromise. So the only questions now are how many “chapters” in the negotiations will be suspended—this week the European Commission suggested eight out of 35, all related to trade and the internal market—and whether the suspension is handled with enough delicacy by both sides to let them be reopened easily in a couple of years' time.

It was always going to be difficult to get Turkey into the EU. On top of complications arising from its poverty, its mostly Muslim culture and its mistreatment of the Kurds, it would be the largest member, with the most votes in the Council of Ministers and the most seats in the European Parliament. Even so, the accession talks have been unnecessarily fraught.

During the past year Turkey and the EU have squabbled bitterly over Cyprus, over clauses in the Turkish penal code that limit free speech and over a French proposal to make it an offence to deny the Armenian genocide of 1915. These may be real issues, but they have not affected Turkey's Western orientation, as embodied in its NATO membership and its impressive reform programme. The economy is growing by 6-7% a year; Turkey was the first Muslim country to send peacekeepers to Lebanon.

All this suggests that the quarrel is to do as much with the Europeans as with the Turks. In 2005 European political leaders agreed to negotiate Turkish accession in good faith, but it is not clear that all are doing so. Unwilling to admit that they want to keep Turkey out, France, Austria and Cyprus are making demands that seem designed to induce the Turks to walk away.

Now another insidious argument is being aired. Negotiations with Turkey are not merely failing; they are damaging the country's Westernisation. Because of the disputes, Turkish support for joining the EU, which stood as high as two-thirds in 2004, has fallen to only one-third now. Three-quarters of Turks believe the EU will never let their country in. Better, say some, to suspend the talks now, before these squabbles do more harm.

Some add that it will make little difference. The painstaking work of bringing Turkish law into line with EU law has more or less stopped. Talks on suspended chapters cannot restart soon because, over the next 18 months, three elections will get in the way (presidential and parliamentary ones in Turkey; a presidential election in Cyprus). So, the siren voices argue, Turkey would do better to give up now and settle for a privileged partnership instead (this is what Germany's Angela Merkel wants). Turkey's Westernisation need not be halted, just diverted: it began in the dying years of the Ottoman empire, long before the EU was dreamt of, and is thus independent of it. For the Turks, EU membership is not a matter of identity; it is a matter of choice.

But it is a good choice—and the consequence of abandoning it could be more serious than the Europeans realise. The EU goal helps to stabilise several shaky elements in Turkey. For the moderate Islamist government, it offers protection against military intervention. For the army, it guarantees secularism. For business, it entrenches market reform. For Kurds, it promises minority rights. Turkey would not suddenly become like Iran if its membership bid failed. But any of these elements might wobble—and the risk of a clash between the army and Islamists would rise.

Nor is Turkey about to join the axis of evil. But unlike previous applicants, it has options other than the EU: bad ones, perhaps, but alternatives nonetheless. It could flirt with Russia or Iran (as a former army chief has suggested). Or it could become pro-Western in the way that, say, Egypt is.

Pause, don't stop

For the EU, a rejection of Turkish membership would represent a huge lost opportunity. Europe's foreign policy, and its hopes of global significance, would suffer a catastrophic loss of credibility if it were seen to be blackballing a moderate Muslim country that has NATO's second-largest army. The EU's reputation in the Muslim world, which is watching the membership talks with Turkey closely, would sink, perhaps even below America's.

At home, a failure of the talks would send a message to Europe's 15m Muslims: that you have no place in Europe. There are some 3m Turks in Germany. What is the government going to tell them? “You do not belong here. Please do not riot”? The Germans, who have more at stake than anybody else, have been breathtakingly insouciant about the consequences of a failure of Turkey's membership bid. In many ways Ms Merkel's ambivalence has done more to damage Turkey's prospects than the more obvious hostility of France and Cyprus.

If it is bad policy to freeze the negotiations, and impossible to continue them, what is the alternative? At their summit later this month, the EU's leaders will rule on the plan to suspend talks on eight chapters and, unusually, to keep other chapters open until Turkey allows access from Cyprus. This may send a negative signal to Turkey but, given the doubts of many EU members, it may be the best that can be agreed on. The Europeans, however, should put no new obstacles in the way of reopening talks and also exert far more pressure on the Greek-Cypriots to settle the Cyprus problem. Hitting the pause button may be inevitable. But the pause must not turn into an indefinite stop.

Take Cyprus issue out of our talks on joining the EU, insists Turkey

By Martin Wolf

"We oppose the linkage between the negotiations and Cyprus," insisted Ali Babacan, Turkey's minister of the economy and chief neg-otiator with the European Union, in an interview with the Financial Times.

Mr Babacan said Cyprus was a separate issue from Turkey's accession. "Our proposal on the Cyprus issue is to put it to one side in the accession negotiations and deal with it by lifting sanctions on both sides simultaneously.

"But it is impossible for Turkey to open its ports to Cyprus unilaterally. The prime minister has committed himself publicly on this." Moreover, added the minister, "the whole of Turkey is behind the government's stance".

"In 2004," he stressed, "we tried very hard for a settlement of the Cyprus question. We worked out a detailed plan and then, unfortunately, the Greek Cypriots rejected it in a referendum at the instigation of [the Cypriot president] Mr Papadopoulos." Mr Babacan said the EU was not impartial on the issue because Cyprus had joined the Union shortly after the referendum.

"The EU initially decided to end the isolation of Turkish Cyprus, to balance the accession of Cyprus. But the EU has not carried through on its promise. It is unfair to ask Turkey to make a unilateral concession to take goods from Cyprus within the customs union when the EU is not open to northern Cyprus.

"Turkey is a big and relatively poor country and perceived by some to have a different culture. But this is wrong. Turkey shares Eur-ope's fundamental values of democracy and the rule of law."

Mr Babacan said Turkey's macroeconomic performance was also converging with the EU's.

"The ratio of public sector net debt to gross domestic product has fallen from over 90 per cent at its peak to a forecast of just under 50 per cent at the end of this year.

"Next year, Turkey should hit the Maastricht limit of 60 per cent of GDP for the ratio of gross debt to GDP. Turkey should easily hit all the Maastricht treaty criteria for debt, deficits and inflation within a couple of years."

Growth this year was likely to end up at about6 per cent and inflation was likely to be just under 10 per cent, despite the impact of higher energy prices, he said. Next year's inflation target would remain at 4 per cent. Employment growth was also buoyant.

Inward foreign direct investment is forecast at $15bn (€11.4bn, £7.7bn) this year. Inward FDI and long-term credit will cover the current account deficit of about 8 per cent of GDP.

Most Turks still believed EU accession was a good thing, insis-ted Mr Babacan. But they had been shaken by the German discussion of a privileged partnership and the proposed French law banning denial of the massacres of Armenians during the first world war, quite apart from the Cyprus issue.

"The political reaction in Turkey to such European statements and actions ex-p-lains the decline in support for accession," he said.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006

Turkey and EU held hostage by Cyprus

Some 43 years after beginning its long courtship of Europe and barely a year after opening entry talks with Brussels, Turkey's bid for European Union membership may have just hit a wall.

Olli Rehn, the EU enlargement commissioner who earlier this year warned the talks could end in a "train crash", said this week his measured response to the impasse in the negotiations meant "there will be no train crash". Rather, "there will be a slowing down because of works further down the line; the train will continue to move". Really? Let us hope he is driving.

Mr Rehn's proposal is to suspend negotiations on eight of the 35 chapters of EU law Turkey needs to adopt before it enters the Union. This is, put overly simply, in response to Ankara's refusal to open up its ports to Cyprus, an EU member. It is harsher than Turkey's EU allies - the UK, Spain, Sweden and Italy - wanted, but has delighted politicians in Germany, Austria, Holland and France who think a poor, Muslim country like Turkey has no business inside the EU in the first place.

In either case, there is a distinct possibility that the Turkish government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, pressed from all sides but up for re-election next year, will simply walk away.

Irrespective of whether it is any longer realistic to believe Turkey will one day join the EU, that would be a geopolitically catastrophic train wreck.

Europe is the ambition that has held together Turkey's otherwise antagonistic and fiercely secular army with Mr Erdogan's neo-Islamist government, with full but now fast-dwindling popular support. It is also the engine of sweeping reform, especially to en-trench democratic and minority rights. It is, above all, proof that the EU can sponsor a marriage between Islam and democracy, a sort of Euro-Islamism analogous to Christian Democracy that can steer a path to modernity and survive the violent dislocations on the way. Mr Erdogan is leading democratic change in a region where Islamists have at best provided alibis to despots determined to prevent democracy.

The EU put all this at risk by its irresponsible attitude to Cyprus. In advance of a 2004 United Nations plan for a confederal system to reunite the island, the EU gave the internationally recognised Greek Cypriot government a guarantee of entry. While Ankara cajoled Turkish Cypriots to vote for the peace deal, the Greek Cypriots self-indulgently voted against - and now obstruct Turkey from within the EU.

While demanding Ankara admit Cyprus ships and goods, Brussels has not delivered on its pledge to end the isolation of Turkish Cyprus. The Cyprus issue can be resolved if member states are prepared to put the strategic interests of the Union above the narrow interests of the Nicosia government. On present form, however, the EU is now widely seen to have retreated behind a wall of dissembling waffle and to be acting in bad faith.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006