Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, human rights have yet again been trampled on in Turkey. With a representative of the Turkish Public Prosecutor’s office present, the offices of the IHD in Ankara were searched by the authorities and everything in them seized. Yet again it was the largest human rights organisation in Turkey that was on the receiving end of this treatment, and, yet again, it was terrorism that served as the pretext for it. What I ask you is this: how much longer are things to go on like this? Is this what Turkey’s reform process adds up to? Can it still seriously be believed that it matters to Turkey whether or not it fulfils the Copenhagen criteria? The Confederal Group of the United European protests emphatically against the Turkish authorities’ actions. The latest raid on the IHD is but the last in a series of hostile acts against this human rights organisation. Let us remind ourselves that, since 1991, over ten members of the IHD have been murdered, and that, in May 1998, the organisation’s chairman, Akin Birdal, was gunned down in his office. In the last parliamentary elections, neither he nor other representatives of HAP were allowed to stand as candidates. According to Amnesty International, in the last couple of years alone, over four hundred separate court actions have been commenced against the IHD, to which must be added the innumerable cases brought against individual members. Mrs Eren Keskin, a lawyer and deputy chairman of the IHD, has just been barred from practising law for a year. Over and over again, the charge is ‘separatist propaganda’. Is this Turkey’s new way of handling human rights? It was with a great deal of sympathy that we all watched as the reform process in Turkey was inaugurated. Both in the European Union and among the Turkish people, there were high hopes for a new policy on the part of the Turkish Government, but these hopes have so far been in vain. Turkey must make changes to critical aspects of its policies, not merely to forms of words, but also in practice. Only then will it have a realistic prospect of acceding to the EU. Recent months have shown that there is no shortage of problem areas. Let us mention first the banning of HAP, yet another ban imposed on a party that champions in particular the concerns of minorities in Turkey. Turkey still relies on the banning of political parties as a means of silencing the voices of those who take a critical view of the government’s policies. In the meantime, the DEHAP – the alliance of parties as part of which HADEP contested the latest parliamentary elections – is also threatened with a ban. Is that, I ask you, democracy? Is that freedom of opinion? Then there is the legal action against Mrs Leyla Zana, a former member of the Turkish parliament, whose party, the P, was also proscribed. While we must welcome the fact that there is at last a retrial, what does it amount to? So far, it appears to be a repeat of the proceedings in 1994, which the European Court of Human Rights categorised as unfair. The judges are, admittedly, no longer military men, but there is a massive military presence in the courtroom. Even after two days of proceedings, there is no prospect of Mrs Zana being released. Let us remind ourselves that her offence, for which she was sentenced to fifteen years in jail, was a sentence spoken in the Turkish parliament – in Kurdish, her mother tongue. Then there is the authorities’ continuing arbitrary treatment of the Kurds, who, even after formal changes to the law, are far from being treated as having equal rights. Harassment and sweeping accusations of separatism continue to be the order of the day. The use of the Kurdish language, too, is still subject to considerable restrictions. There continues to be no evidence that Turkey is making any effort to set in motion a real process of democratisation, or to involve all elements in Turkish society in seeking solutions to its manifold problems. Then there are the conditions in police stations and prisons. Anyone who is put into custody in Turkey can reckon, with a high degree of probability, on being mistreated, especially if he or she is a member of a minority group. Elementary rights, such as the right to have contact with family members and legal counsel, are often granted only on a restricted basis or disregarded altogether. The most prominent example of this is Abdullah Öcalan, who has for months had virtually no contact with the outside world. The list could go on and on. This is where we might bear Cyprus in mind. It has to be said, for all these reasons, that the road Turkey must travel before it joins Europe is still, alas, a long one. The assumption that Turkey can hope for accession negotiations with the EU without fundamental changes to its policies is an illusion. Turkey will have a prospect of accession only if it proves that it takes the Copenhagen criteria seriously. It is up to Turkey to show by its policies what value it really places upon accession to the EU.

Political group: GUE-NGL