Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-11-06-Speech-3-062"
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"en.20021106.6.3-062"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to return to the announcement by the President of the Council that we can expect Copenhagen to produce new resolutions on Turkey. I want to make four comments in this regard, comments that I hope you, Mr President of the Council, will be able to take to heart.
Firstly, the Commission, in its latest report, is eloquently silent on the stipulation of a deadline for the possible commencement of negotiations – I have to put it in such precise terms. No doubt there are reasons for this. Put more simply, the Commission, and, I believe, the overwhelming majority in Parliament too, does not believe that, at the moment, progress has been made to a sufficient degree as to make it possible to come to definite agreements with Turkey concerning the commencement of negotiations.
Secondly, we have already experienced a situation in which many MEPs, who are still with us, told this House that barring Turkey from the customs union would inevitably drive it into the arms of the Islamic fundamentalists! The head of government at the time was Tansu Ciller, who paraded this argument through the country, saying, ‘for God's sake, give me a pro-European perspective, or else the Islamists will win the election!’ Six months later, this lady formed a coalition with Mr Erbakan. What a credible policy!
Thirdly, this whole troupe of politicians – Yilmaz, my much-respected colleague Cem, and Mrs Ciller especially – has been dramatically turfed out of office in Turkey and replaced by a political tendency that has to date taken a totally different approach. Suddenly, we have reached that point in the situation, when people say: Oh yes, the ones who used to be pro-European, the ones we always called the guardians of the pro-European perspective, have been kicked out of office and their opponents are now in government, but they are being given at once what we refused to the others for years on end! That cannot be for real!
Fourthly, I ask you to consider the following. No party has made greater difficulties for itself in rejecting measures towards reform than the present-day AKP. In the election campaign, they even explicitly rejected a whole range of the reform measures that we had demanded. Now, we are all politicians, and if we were all, every day, measured against the statements we made in election campaigns, we would all be the worse for it! I know that.
Yes, you in particular! But every government has the right to be judged, not by its words, but by its deeds. By the time Copenhagen comes around, the present Turkish Government will have been in office for just six weeks. Give them a bit more time, so that they can be judged on their actions."@en1
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