BBC Radyo – AB Müzakere Çerçeve Belgesi Hakkında (İng.)

CHP Genel Başkan Yardımcısı Onur Öymen’in BBC Radio’ya verdiği mülakat (İngilizce)
3 Ekim 2005

As a matter of fact, we are not imformed about the content of the text. And we are very much surprised that this deal was left to the last moment because they presented a text to us today and they asked to accept this text without we saw it. What about the parlament? In such an important process obviously the government or the parliament should have the right to study this document and ask the Turkish opinion. As opposition party we are not imformed at all.

But what we understand is that this text would be harder to reject for Turkey compared to the final document of 17th of December. In the meantime there are some public statements of European Union for instance on Cyprus and on some other issues which makes things more complicated. Therefore, we believe that we have to sit at the table, read the text and discuss about it. Only after that we can express our opinion as Turkey. If the government is under the pressure to accept a text that would lead Turkey not to a full memebership but in practice to special status of course we will react to that. We woun’t accept a condition less than full membership.

An expectation from EU for the fullfilment of some conditions on Human Rights or other issues can be understood and we can go on. But in cases in which some political parties and  governments react against Turkish membership not only because of lack of progress in these fields but because we are Turks, because of the religion, because of culture we cannot accept these reactions. In that case these groups could only be qualified as beeing racist.

It is not a real problem. First of all, Turkey would not be the first large country to join the union. Poland was also a large country and not very rich but joined. Second, about the movement of  Turkish workers, I remember that the same rejection was raised against Spain. In the same case they accepted Spain as full member. Happended in German case is just the opposite. They returned home. Even today there are nearly 40 thousand Turks returning from Germany to Turkey. So we don’t expect a massive flow of Turkish workers to the European cities and companies.