KurdistanObserver.com

EU Report Critical Of Turkey’s Pace Of Reform

The Financial Times. June 5, 2006

Turkey's quest to join the European Union could come to a halt this year because of concerns over Ankara's human rights record and tensions with Cyprus, an internal EU document makes clear.

A hard-hitting draft report for a key EU-Turkey meeting next week says Ankara has done too little to implement reforms and has failed to rein in the military or protect the freedoms of expression and religion.

"The pace of change has slowed in the last year," it says, "There is an urgent need to both implement legislation already in force and . . . to take further legislative initiatives. Further efforts are needed to ensure full civilian control over the military, in line with practice in EU member states."

The draft voices its concern at "reports of torture and ill-treatment" and the "many cases pending against individual persons for non-violent expression of opinion". It says that "in the area of freedom of religion no concrete progress can be reported yet in terms of addressing the difficulties faced by non-Muslim religious minorities."

It adds that the situation has worsened in the south-east of the country, where government troops face the Kurdish separatists of the PKK, which the EU lists as a terrorist organisation.

Turkey's problems are all the greater, since Brussels has given Ankara an ultimatum to resolve a dispute with Cyprus this year, but prospects for a breakthrough appear as distant as they have ever been.

Olli Rehn, the EU's enlargement commissioner, has warned that the deadlock over the divided island could lead to a "train crash" in negotiations over Turkey's membership this year. The EU is due to open the first of 35 negotiating "chapters" at its meeting with Turkey next Tuesday, but the Ankara-Nicosia tensions threaten to bedevil every part of the talks.

Cyprus has been an EU member since 2004, but has no diplomatic relations with Turkey, which invaded the island in 1974. Instead, Ankara maintains diplomatic ties with the Turkish Cypriot community in the north of the island.

With unease growing with-in EU member states about enlargement in general and Turkey's political direction in particular, the risk is that the impasse over Cyprus could bring the entire negotiating process to a halt.