Paper at the International Conference on Kurds, the European Union and Turkey,
London, Sunday, 29 June 2003

Mister chairman, ladies and gentlemen

In order to achieve membership of the European Union a country must fulfil 3 basic criteria.

The criteria to be fulfilled are:
- The political criterion includes, stability of institutions, guaranteeing democracy, rule of law,
   human rights and respect for and protection of minorities.
- The economic criterion includes, the existence of a functioning market economy and the
   capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union
-  Finally, the candidate countries should be able to live up to the obligations of membership,
   which include, the transposition and implementation of the EU acquis.

It is a precondition for commencing negotiations for accession that the candidate countries meet the political criterion – both in theory and in practice.
In addition to this criterion a candidate country needs stability and good relations with its neighbouring countries.

I will mainly focus on the first criterion.
In light of these criteria, we will now examine the relationship between Turkey and the EU.
Turkey applied for membership in 1963, and achieved 36 years later in 1999 status as a candidate at the summit in Helsinki.
EU has identified the priorities for Turkey in order to achieve membership and has clarified that once the criteria are fulfilled, Turkey will become member of the EU. 3 years later at the summit in December in Copenhagen, 10 new countries were accepted as members and the summit agreed on opening negotiations with two new countries.
Turkey however did not receive a specific date for opening of negotiations, as Turkey did not fulfil the political criterion. As Turkey pressed for a specific date, the summit accepted to deal with this at the summit in December 2004 – if Turkey at that time fulfils the political criteria.

EU wants Turkey to become member, and Turkey wants to be a member of the EU
According to Turkey EU is just pretending and vice versa. Turkey – like other countries – has to fulfil the necessary criteria. EU wants Turkey to be an European country in all aspects in order to accept its membership, but Turkey wants to be accepted on its own terms.
Turkey says: “We want to play soccer with you, but not according to the rules of FIFA. Let us play according to our rules.”

Does Turkey fulfil the criteria?
When Turkey achieved status as a candidate country, priorities were identified for Turkey. Turkey pretends to meet these criteria, but in reality they are doing nothing.
As Turkey is familiar with military coups, they waited until the last moment and like a military coup on the night of the second of August, they made some changes.
Even though these changes were just a play to the gallery, Turkey claimed to fulfil the criteria. The EU however did not accept the changes as sufficient. Turkey did not succeed in pretending.

What does EU want ?
Turkey has to be a democratic country like the other European countries
Turkey has to show respect for and protection of minorities
The courts have to be free from any kind of control by the state, and corruption must be stopped
The traffic of refugees to Europe must also stop
The army´s influence on the civil society must end
And finally Turkey has to have good relations with its neighbouring countries

What does Turkey do?
Turkey made some changes, but even these changes do not meet the Copenhagen criteria, and they are not at all implemented. Even if they were, there are hundreds of articles, which hinder democracy and human rights for Kurds. Some of the obstacles are present in the constitution and some of them in articles dealing with political parties, the press, language, education and criminal cases.
The constitution of Turkey is filled with prohibitions.
In order not to give the Kurds even the slidest right, the principal of an undivided state is used as an excuse to hinder general human rights.
For example: The third article of the constitution and in other articles criminalize being a Kurd; no 2923 concerning education prohibits education in Kurdish; no. 5422 article 1 prohibits Kurdish place names; no. 3257 article 9 concerning art prohibits Kurdish music, film, television and other art expressions; no. 2820 article 81 concerning political parties prohibits Kurdish political parties and parties with a Kurdish name (since 1950es 53 parties have been prohibited); no. 124 concerning criminal cases prohibits all Kurdish organisations; no. 312 and 159 concerning criminal cases prohibits freedom of expression.
These examples are just a few out of hundreds.
In 2002 a new law was passed in the parliament, but this law only gives the right to learn Kurdish in private schools or courses – but limits connected to this right makes it in practice impossible to use.
Broadcasting programmes in Kurdish are now allowed both on state and private channels, but with a limit of 15-20 minutes each day. Even though, the law is not yet implemented a national television channel TRT has the 12th of June taken the law to the high court in order to avoid programmes in Kurdish.

What are the conditions for private Kurdish courses?
- 1. Only pupils from 12 to 18 are allowed to learn Kurdish
- 2. Pupils must have completed primary school
- 3. Pupils must provide a medical certificate prior to the course start, stating that they are not mentally or physically handicapped
- 4. Pupils must have parents' consent
- 5. "Ethnic" clothing is not permitted
- 6. Kurdish lessons can be given only on school-free days (week-ends and holidays)
- 7. Tuition can only be given in private schools, not state schools
- 8. Tuition is needed for authorization by the Ministry of Education
- 9. Tuition will be monitored by inspectors from the Ministry of Education
- 10. Teachers have to be Turkish citizens
- 11. Teachers have to be qualified
- 12. Individuals who have been convicted for crimes against the state are not allowed to teach
The conditions for the private schools show no wish for possibilities for Kurdish education or courses.
In spite of these changes there are neither any Kurdish television program nor a private Kurdish school in Turkey. On the contrary television cannels, where they play Kurdish music, are closed; and people, who wants to open private Kurdish courses, are not accepted.

I want to give some examples from the Turkish newspaper Radikal´s news from the 9th of June this year, which shows the current situation:
- Because of a calendar with the month written in English, Turkish and Kurdish the publishers were 
  put on trial for separatism and terror
- A group of students from Nigde university are on trial with the same accusations, because they 
  watched Kurdish television and listened to Kurdish music
- At a demonstration in the Kurdish city, Hakkari the police took pictures of the participants. One of them were accused for separatism, because according to the police his mouth showed that he was shouting slogans of separatism
- On the national and children´s day (the 23rd of April this year) 2 of the children tried to avoid the
  parade. For this reason they were taken to the police station and locked in a room with no access
  to toilet facilities, so they had to use the floor. Afterwards they were forced to smear their own
  excrements on their faces and forced to walk in the street, as a frightening example. The next day they were subjected to the same violation.
- A resent example, which shows the Turkey stats obstacles against the Kurdish population, happens in Diyarbakir to week’s ego. A play at a theatre was prohibited, because they were using the colours- green, red and yellow- in the play. Green, red and yellow are the colours of the Kurdish flag.

Futhermore, even though there are elections, a parliament and a government in Turkey, Turkey is in fact controlled by the military.
In order to fool the EU the number of civil members of the National Security Council has been increased, but it was not the civil members, who made this decision. Whatever the army is saying, is to be understood as an order.

In order to bring Turkey in line with the principles laid down by the EU, Turkey has accepted 6 packets. According to the last packet (the 19th of June) the army still has the same influence on the parliament. In this packet there are two articles concerning democracy and the Kurds.
Article 8 in the Anti-Terror Law was removed and private Kurdish television was accepted even though the army opposed this, but the government only made this change because the same restrictions were present in law no. 312. This is why they say that removing article 8 will not be a threat to the Turkish state. 

The government wants to prove their will to freedom and democracy in order to be accepted by the EU, therefore they want to open a small mosque in every home and working place. In this way they are using the EU for their own purpose – that it – support to islamisation of the country. 
The chief of staff Hilmi Özkök made the second of June 2003 this statement: “EU are supporting terror in Turkey.” And the vice chief of staff Yasar Büyükanit said the 31th of May: “The Kurds have been ruled by the Turks for 500 years, and we are discussing the right to education in Kurdish. But we ought to discuss, why we could not teach them Turkish.”
The prime minister Tayyip Erdogan, who himself is being controlled, answered after the summit in Copenhagen on the 24th of December 2002 a question about the Kurdish problem this way: “ Do not believe those, who claim that there is a problem, believe those, who deny that there is a problem. If you believe those, who are talking about a problem, there will be a problem. So we say that there is no problem.”
The army at the same time constantly warn the EU that if it looses its power, Turkey will become “a new Iran.”

When it is appropriate the army blaims the civil society the lack of rights and freedom and vice versa, but none of them have any intension to democratize the country or to give the Kurds any rights.
The army wants Turkey to become a member of the EU without giving up their power, and the religious government, which wants to protect their own methods, uses the EU as an excuse.
Prime minister Erdogan, who himself recently experienced being prohibited, became member of the parliament and prime minister, but does not even want to hear about others rights, and Mr. Erdogan thinks that if everybody just accepts the statement that there are no problems, then there will be no problems.

At the same time Turkey has not yet solved its problems with its neighbouring countries.
- Cypres is now a member of the EU and still being occupied by Turkey, which in fact means that Turkey is occupying a part of the EU.
- Turkey wanted to occupy Iraqi Kurdistan, but because of the United States and Great Britain Turkey was not able to attack and commit genocide as they wanted. 

The corruption in the society is tremendous. In order to receive service from a state employee, corruption is still common practice. Both the state and the army are financial kingpin in drug dealing, and use the money for buy weapons.
The banks launder the money.
In addition to this the army and the police work together in earning money by sending refugees from Asia and Africa to Europe.
The police officers, who torture people; the army, which commits genocide and the corrupt politicians walk around free. If now and then someone is caught, he is usually acquitted or the trial will last for years and eventually be statute-barred.

Turkey has agreed on and signed a lot of international conventions, but is not implementing any of them. In example: In Turkey torture is prohibited, but according to Amnesty International is still widespread and systematically used.

No matter how many laws Turkey changes, no implementation is taking place. The changes are just cosmetic.

Turkey knows that they will not achieve membership very soon, but wants to start negotiations as soon as possible, because they then will receive bigger financial support.
Both the Turkish and the Kurdish populations want Turkey to become a member of the EU, but the people, who rule the country, do not want to become European. They just want more money from the EU

What do the Kurds want?
The Kurds are the most numerous people of the world without a stat. Every Kurd believes that they have a right to self government, but also realise that at the moment an independent state will not be a realistic expectation. A federation could be a possible solution. In order to get a peaceful solution, the Kurds primarily want the following:
- A new constitution, where the rights of the Kurdish population are secured
- In order to be able to discuss the Kurdish problem freely, all prohibitions and restrictions must be 
  lifted
- All Kurdish political parties and organisations must be allowed
- All limitations on Kurdish media and press must be lifted
- Kurdish as a mother tongue language must be accepted in public schools
- Any kind of prohibition against Kurdish names must be lifted
- The deported people must be given the right to return to their villages in order to be able to 
  maintain their lives.

Even though Turkey still does not accept the basic rights, the Kurds will continuously try to explain that this will be the way to open discussions and will play a major role in solving the problems.
Even tough the Kurds consider a federation as a reasonable solution, the Kurds will be able to accept that the Turkish boarder will not be changed. According to them it will be possible to live side by side as two people. But if Turkey does not show any interest in democratising the country and solving the Kurdish problem, this will not be possible.

What does the EU do, and what should it do?
The EU has laid out the criteria for Turkey and every year the commission will follow up on the condition in a report. Turkey will have to fulfil these criteria to begin negotiations before the summit in December 2004.In order to do this Turkey will have to change in several aspects and show a will to implementations. Whether the EU believes this to be the case or not, will be shown in December 2004.

Looking at the criteria it must be extremely obvious to the EU, whether Turkey really wants to follow the directions to democratize the country and solve the problems.
The experience from the cold war, where Turkey was very important to the western European countries, led Turkey to the assumption that the EU also will accept Turkey, whatever they do.
Therefore the EU needs to state the criteria clearly and without delay.

The EU commission wants Turkey to participate and for this reason they neither use the word Kurd nor Kurdistan, as they know that Turkey is allergic to these words. In this way the EU participates in prohibiting the words Kurd and Kurdistan.
The 4th and 5th of June 2003 Arie Oostlander from Holland presented a report to the European parliament on Turkey and the report was accepted. According to the report Turkey has made some progress. But it also states that in relation to minorities, neighbouring countries, democracy and human rights Turkey still has to make progress.
This report is especially interesting.
Before the report was presented to the EU parliament, the foreign commission of the EU changed specific parts, which would draw attention to the kemalists. This stresses the fact that the major obstacle for democratizing in Turkey is the kemalism. The original report shows the actual reality. The ideology of kemalism is one language, one people (nation), one state and one leader, which means the military.

If Turkey is to accept the rights of the Kurds, this ideology will not be possible.
On the contrary the constitution will have to be totally changed.
It is shameful that in order not to upset Turkey, this report was cleansed of the remarks about kemalism and how it affects the lack of democratising in the same manner as the words Kurds and Kurdistan never were mentioned in the report of the European Commission.

If the EU really wants Turkey to be a part of the EU, there needs to be changes in theory as well as in practice, and the EU has to make this perfectly clear to Turkey. If the EU holds back in mentioning the Kurds or Kurdistan or withholds from criticising the kemalist ideology in order not to upset Turkey, what difference is there between the EU and Turkey?
If the EU wants to stand up for its own tradition for democracy, it can not – even for Turkey – make any compromise on this subject.

The Kurds want Turkey to become a member of the EU, but not before Turkey has lived up to its obligations on democracy and rights to the Kurds and other minorities. 
Some would claim that membership of the EU according to the Kurds automatically will mean human rights to the Kurds, but this is not correct.
Once Turkey has achieved membership and the right to vote, they will never accept any change at all. Therefore the changes have to be made and implemented, before Turkey can achieve membership status.
Thank you for the possibility to share my thoughts with you.