Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-10-24-Speech-3-021"
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"en.20071024.4.3-021"2
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"Mr President, I would also like to express my compliments to the rapporteur, Mrs Oomen-Ruijten. My immediate response to Mr Langen’s remark is that in my Group we are definitely talking about negotiations with a view to membership of the European Union!
The resolution we are debating today is an encouragement to the Turkish Government to keep going down that route whatever it does. Prime Minister Erdoğan was given a strong mandate to do that by the Turkish electorate. That does indeed put him in a position to spur on the reforms. We expect rapid results now and we therefore expect that the Commission will soon come up with a progress report to that effect.
Urgent issues should not be overlooked, of course. I think that it would be a hugely important symbolic step, which would have a huge ripple effect, if the Turkish Government were to do something about Article 301, if they were to repeal it or reformulate it. That would create the necessary openness in Turkey for debate, including debate on issues from the past, and that brings me to the Armenian question. We believe that it is very important that there be an internal debate on this in Turkey, but it is mainly up to Turkey itself to organise that and not so much for Parliament or the US House of Representatives to try to force the issue. It is mainly an internal matter; we can help, but there is not really much point in us continually pushing for this from outside.
The new constitution has been announced. That also creates opportunities, we believe, to finally seek a political solution to the Kurdish question. I share the view of those who say that we should do everything we can to prevent a military escalation in northern Iraq, but we can only do that if we first distance ourselves from the terrorist attacks of the PKK and demand the PKK to stop.
Secondly, we must also support Turkey in its dialogue with Iraq and the Iraqi authorities, and also in its dialogue with the regional authorities in Kurdish Iraq to cooperate in practice to stop these attacks. We welcome new diplomatic initiatives, but we believe that it is mainly practical cooperation in the region itself that will drive down and end the violence."@en1
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