Etiket conference

Kristin Ofer Finally this year’s EU Progress Report on Turkey was published on October 14th 2009 but instead of discussing the report’s details the journalists participating in the 17th annual EU-Turkey Conference of Journalists complained about the difficulties to keep people interested in the subject. Basically the message of the EU report was that there are slight progresses in Turkey but still some work has to be done. The European Commission expressed its appreciation of Turkey regarding the Ergenekon trial stating: “For the first time, illegal networks nested within the democratic institutions are being investigated.” Of course the diplomatic breakthrough between Turkey and Armenia when the foreign ministers of the two countries signed a protocol in Zurich on October 10th to improve their relation was positively mentioned as well. But the commission complained about the shortcomings concerning freedom of press and other civil rights like minority rights, especially for the Kurds, torture, excessive use of force by the Turkish security officials and women’s rights that still need to be improved. Surprisingly, the participants of the EU-Turkey Conference of Journalists which was held at Istanbul Bilgi University’s Santral campus, did hardly talk about these subjects. Instead of going into the details of the European Commission’s Report Professor Ayhan Kaya, Director of Bilgi University’s EU Institute and Moderator of the panel discussion, asked the European Journalists about the attitudes of their respective countries toward Turkey’s EU admission. The opening speech was delivered by Istanbul Bilgi University Rector Prof. Halil Guven who was rather critical of EU’s policies. He underlined the fact that EU has accepted “half of Cyprus as full member” while it failed to keep up with its promises for the remaining other half. Prof. Guven said, because of such policies it “is hard to defend EU in Turkey.” Following Prof. […]