Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-05-05-Speech-2-391"
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"en.20090505.27.2-391"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, this is the last plenary sitting of this legislative period. My fellow Member Mr Öger has just said that Turkey is a priority. In recent years, as rapporteur for my group, I have been able to deal with this issue and I must say I am very happy that in this last session we are once more getting to the heart of the matter, namely the question of democracy in Turkey.
It is the first Copenhagen criterion that is in question. There are varying opinions as to how Turkey has developed. However, I believe that in one respect there is consensus: the pace of reform in Turkey seems to have slackened; the impression at the end of this legislative period is that Turkey now has further to go before it will be ready for accession than it had at the beginning both of the mandate of the Commission and of the legislature of this Parliament.
For the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe the problems of freedom of the press and of opinion are particularly important in this context. You know that you cannot watch YouTube in Turkey. The rights of journalists, publishers, publicists, columnists and authors are restricted by certain legal regulations. The Commission has thankfully indicated in its progress report that this is a problem. In the opinion of many observers, these problems have increased. I would be grateful if the Commission would say something about this – whether it believes the problems have got worse or whether things have got better. That would be really surprising.
In addition, there are important subjects like the protection of religious minorities and the safeguarding of women’s rights. However, the key issue at the moment is the question of freedom of the press, the revoking of the press accreditations of critical journalists by the Prime Minister, the largely unjustified arrests of critical journalists and publishers in the course of investigations into the clearly criminal Ergenekon network, the takeover of the ATV-Sabah media group by the Scharlach-Holding, which is owned or controlled by the Prime Minister’s son-in-law, the Prime Minister’s public calls to boycott media and the judgement against the Doğan media group and fine of EUR 380 million with the aim of forcing it out of business because it reported the lighthouse donation scandal, and his preferential treatment of the AKP. This is not only a question of press freedom, it also scares off investors, who doubt the certainty of the law in Turkey.
Turkey is an important neighbour, an important, respected NATO partner. We want to continue supporting Turkey; that is the opinion of my group. However, we believe that a great deal has to be done here, that the Turkish Government must demonstrate its will to no longer ride roughshod over fundamental European rights, as it is doing at the moment. We would be grateful if this could be documented persuasively in the next legislative period.
Moreover, I believe that we should have this debate not in Strasbourg, but in Brussels."@en1
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