Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-04-11-Speech-2-251"
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"en.20000411.9.2-251"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I have visited Turkey three times in the last six months, once before and twice after the Helsinki resolution. I experienced surprise after surprise and also disappointment after disappointment. The situation is in fact as a number of fellow Members have described it. There are forces which are fighting strongly to move closer to the European Union and there are other forces which reverse all their efforts by carrying out attacks and by putting Akin Birdal back in jail, thereby provoking the pro-European forces.
It is of course a good sign that the Turkish Government now has a written programme setting out the action which Turkey must take on the basis of the demands of the European Union. And it must take it, because paper alone is cheap. Changes need to be made here. The changes also affect the national security council which, according to this proposal, now needs to be reorganised as an advisory council and is no longer the final supreme instance of Turkish democracy or Turkish relations.
It is, of course, a bad sign that there is one incident after another, such as the arrest of Akin Birdal who, as Mr Schori said, has such a positive attitude to the changes in Turkey itself. It is also a bad sign that no gradual solution has been found to the Kurdish question, the prerequisites for which are much improved today although, Mrs Stenzel, I am unaware of any statement by Ecevit that Kurdish is a Turkish dialect. What Ecevit said to us was that there were several Kurdish dialects and that he could even imagine Kurdish being used as an official language in Turkey under certain conditions.
I should like to urge you, Mr President-in-Office, to work together with the other fourteen Member States of the European Union to ensure that the European Investment Bank is finally authorised to give Turkey financial support. It is not easy to ward off criticism in connection with the financial protocol to the effect that we have not kept our promises to support the modernisation and the restructuring of Turkey financially.
My last point is this: of course we are also aware in this House that the question of Turkey, including its relations with Greece, is bound up with the Cyprus issue. If we could manage to make Turkey more open and more cooperative on the Cyprus question, that would be a very positive development. However, I should like to say quite clearly on behalf of our Group and, I believe, on behalf of many others, that unless Turkey itself does what it has to on the question of human rights and democracy, even if is cooperative on the issue of Cyprus, and unless Turkey shows that it is willing to change its internal democratic system, there can be no accession to Europe."@en1
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