KurdistanObserver.com

 EU commissioner Calls Date Of Novelist's Trial In Turkey a 'Provocation'

By JAN SLIVA
Sep 13, 2005

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- The official in charge of European Union expansion accused Turkey of provocation on Tuesday, saying it was no coincidence that the trial of a Turkish novelist would clash with a EU summit.

Olli Rehn, the EU commissioner overseeing expansion plans, said the prosecution of author Orhan Pamuk violated a human rights convention.

He also said it would take at least 10-15 years to finish negotiations with Turkey on its possible accession to the bloc, and warned Ankara that the pace of the talks will depend on how quickly it recognizes Cyprus.

"The Pamuk case raises serious questions about the interpretation of Turkey's new penal code. The Dec. 16 date can't be just a coincidence, it has to be a provocation,'' Rehn told the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee. Dec. 16 is also the date of an EU summit.

Rehn added that the case violated the European Convention on Human Rights.

Pamuk has been charged with insulting Turkey's national character and could face prison for his comments on Turkey's killing of Armenians and Kurds.

"Thirty-thousand Kurds and one million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it,'' Pamuk was quoted as saying in an interview with a Swiss newspaper magazine in February.

The "one million Armenians'' refers to Armenians killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, which Armenians and several other nations recognize as the first genocide of the 20th century.

Turkey vehemently denies that a genocide took place, saying the death toll is inflated and Armenians were killed in a civil war as the Ottoman Empire collapsed, eventually giving way to the Turkish Republic in 1923.

Turkey, which has been trying to improve its human rights record as it vies for EU membership, is extremely sensitive about both the Armenian and Kurdish issues, and the new Turkish penal code makes it a crime to denigrate Turkey's national identity.

The code -- adopted at the EU's insistence -- was debated earlier this year and freedom of speech advocates said the clause on national identity was too vague and could lead to the imprisonment of artists, scholars and journalists.

Rehn said the European Commission will continue to closely monitor human rights issues in Turkey, but still expects the accession negotiations to start on Oct. 3 as scheduled, despite EU government grumbling over Turkey's refusal to recognize Cyprus.

In August, Turkey signed a customs protocol extending its existing customs arrangements with the 25-member EU to the 10 new members including Cyprus. But it accompanied its signature with a separate declaration saying this did not mean it was formally recognizing the divided Mediterranean island.

Rehn said formal recognition "was not a precondition'' to start the Oct. 3 talks. "However, it is regrettable that Turkey had to issue a declaration accompanying the protocol,'' he said.

The European Court of Human Rights -- based in Strasbourg, France -- ordered Turkey on Tuesday to pay more than $85,932 to the relatives of two suspected members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party who were killed in a police raid in 1996.

An anti-terrorist squad shot Omer Bayram and Ridvan Altun in an operation which the court said violated three articles of the human rights convention.