Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-04-22-Speech-4-015"
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"en.20040422.1.4-015"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, the decision in the court case against Leyla Zana shows beyond doubt that Turkey is not yet ready negotiate its accession to the EU. Unaffected by the official reforms in Turkey, the court is doing things the way they were done in the old days, so anyone who had attended the hearings – as I did – could conclude that the initial judgment, founded upon one sentence spoken in Kurdish and harshly criticised by the European Court of Human Rights, would be upheld. Turkey could have used the trial as a means of demonstrating that its reforms of the justice system exist not only on paper. This was not, in the final analysis, about the minutiae of the law, but about a woman whose fate had become a symbol of the failure of Turkish politics and Turkish justice, a woman whose trial was a test of how seriously reforms were being taken. Neither that, nor the fact that the eyes of the world were upon them, could induce the court to conduct a trial in accordance with the rule of law. Let me ask you this, then: if even the case of Leyla Zana cannot bring about change in the Turkish legal system, how are reforms to be implemented at all?
In principle – and let me make this clear – I am in favour of Turkey joining the EU, provided that it meets the relevant conditions. Turkey has known for years that there must be drastic change in it if it is to have a prospect of acceding, but yesterday’s judgment shows that the willingness to do so is still not yet present, and so the EU must now, at last, cut short all this talk about the commencement of accession negotiations being imminent. Those who, in the aftermath of this ruling, continue to insist that accession negotiations will be possible in six months’ time, show only their indifference to the Copenhagen criteria and their interest in the implementation of strategic objectives to the exclusion of all else. Far from it; the fact remains that the criteria for accession to the EU have been laid down and must still be met. For as long as Turkey ignores that fact, there can be no accession negotiations."@en1
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