4 September 2006Dan Bilefsky
European Union lawmakers on Monday sharply criticized Turkey for its slow pace of reform and warned that failure to make progress in a dispute over Cyprus risked bringing entry negotiations to a halt.
The toughly worded report by the European Parliament's powerful foreign affairs committee also cited insufficient progress on freedom of expression and raised concerns about the country's treatment of religious minorities, the Kurdish population and women.
The European Parliament must approve whether a candidate country can join the EU and its views are seen as an important barometer of a country's membership prospects. Negotiations are expected to last up to 15 years.
"The European Parliament regrets the slowing down of the reform process," said the report, written by Camiel Eurlings, a Dutch conservative. He chided Turkey for "persistent shortcomings" and singled out Cyprus as a key stumbling block. The Parliament's impatience reflects a growing wariness in the EU of the risks of further enlargement and of Turkey's candidacy in particular.
The possibility of Turkey's eventual admission was a significant factor in the rejection of the EU's constitution in France and the Netherlands, where voters remain anxious about admitting a large, agrarian Muslim country.
Olli Rehn, the EU's expansion commissioner, recently warned that Turkey was heading toward a "train crash" with the EU.
The European Commission, the EU's executive, will publish its assessment of Turkey's membership progress on Oct. 24 amid growing concern that the momentum for reform has dramatically slowed since entry talks began last year. Turkey has, for example, been slow in enacting a promised law guaranteeing the property rights of the Christian minority, while a controversial article of the penal code used to prosecute writers and intellectuals remains on the books.
The deepest immediate division between Turkey and the Union is Turkey's failure to open its ports and airports to traffic from part of Cyprus. Eager to avoid inflaming Turkish public opinion ahead of presidential elections in May and parliamentary elections in autumn 2007, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has insisted that Turkey will not recognize the Greek half of the divided island until the EU lifts trade barriers against Turkish Cyprus, which is recognized by Turkey alone.
Speaking after a two-day EU foreign ministers meeting on Saturday, Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja of Finland, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, warned that if Turkey failed to sign a protocol extending the EU customs union to Cyprus, "it will create a serious situation."
Echoing his concerns, the Parliament's report Monday called on Turkey to recognize Cyprus by the end of 2006 or face possible suspension of its entry talks. "A lack of progress in this regard will have serious implications for the negotiation process and could even bring it to a halt," the report said.
Mehmet Dulger, chairman of the Turkish Parliament's foreign affairs committee and a prominent member of the governing AK party, said in an interview that Turkey was determined to speed up reforms.
But he added that Turks were increasingly frustrated with the demands placed on them by the EU and that the constant criticism by Brussels was creating a backlash. "All of these requirements placed on Turkey create the impression that the EU will never be satisfied, no matter what Turkey does," he said.
He added that the EU had exacerbated the Cyprus problem by admitting the Greek part of the divided island before the conflict had been resolved.
Referring to Turkey's progress on human rights, the report praised recent acquittals of scholars and novelists like Orhan Pamuk, who had been prosecuted for "insulting Turkishness." But it cited concerns over cases such as that of an Armenian-Turkish editor, Hrant Dink, who was recently given a suspended six-month jail term for saying that Turkey, under the Ottoman Empire, had committed genocide against Armenians during World War I.
