Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-01-18-Speech-4-149"
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"en.20010118.8.4-149"2
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"Mr President, today's debate and subsequent vote follow on from the debate which we held in this House on 14 December last year, when the urgent vote was cancelled following the decision by the three political groups to withdraw their motions. That decision was a gesture of confidence on the part of the European Parliament in the will and the ability of the Turkish authorities to manage the hunger strike crisis in a non-violent, humane and efficient manner.
In fact, the motion for a resolution by our fellow members in the liberal group, which is signed by the honourable Mr Duff, states that Parliament is satisfied with the Turkish government's decision to postpone its plans to transfer prisoners to these prisons and to obtain the society's
consent
to the reform of the prison system. Similar hopes were expressed in the resolution of the group of the Greens signed by Mr Cohn-Bendit, which quoted statements made by the Turkish Minister of Justice.
Some members may have been won over by the arguments set out in the letter on the matter from His Excellency the Ambassador of Turkey, who again did us the honour of sending us what is now his customary letter in such cases, in which he stressed that the Turkish government was handling the matter with the utmost seriousness and that Parliament needed to leave superficialities to one side when dealing with matters as important as the prison system in Turkey. In the wake of all of which, honourable members, how tragic that the superficiality of the European Parliament has proven, in this case at least, to be closer to the mark than the seriousness and political maturity of the Turkish authorities.
As you know, a few days later, on 20 December, army and police divisions went on the attack in order, naturally, to save the prisoners' lives, as the Turkish ambassador informs us in another letter. Twenty-four prisoners were killed and 131 were wounded during this attack. And, of course, three Turkish soldiers also died. And what is the upshot of all this bloodshed? The hunger strike in the Turkish prisons is continuing on a massive scale, making it impossible to exclude the possibility of more attacks, more deaths and more bloodshed.
Our joint motion for a resolution quite rightly suggests the need to avoid further tragedy and therefore calls on the Turkish government to take immediate non-violent
measures to avoid any such developments. That is our main demand. Of course, what we also need is an objective inquiry with international guarantees and for responsibility to be apportioned for what happened on 20 December. I think we also need the situation to be addressed with the assistance and under the supervision of the European Union. I talk of supervision because Turkey is, of course, a candidate country and its candidature must meet the Copenhagen criteria, which are damaged by such incidents, incidents which, of course, are recorded by us and, I assume, by the Commission, which is called on in our resolution to specifically mention the situation in Turkish prisons in its annual report.
These are, I am sorry to say, the stubborn facts and they are not counterbalanced by the overbearing, not to say insulting tone of the advice meted out by Turkey's representatives to the European Parliament."@en1
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