BBC – AB Ortak Tutum Belgesi Hakkında (İng.)

CHP Genel Başkan Yardımcısı Sayın Onur Öymen’in BBC’ye Verdiği Mülakat
12 Haziran 2006
 We are not surprised. We are disappointed; but we are not surprised after the admission of Greek Cyprus as a full member to the European Union. We expected such problems. Because obviously from the begginning they wanted to use Turkish application for full membership to solve their own problems. One of their expectations was the recognition of the Southern Cyprus as the legitimate government of Cyprus by Republic of Turkey. For that matter, they used every possible means including this process of negotiations on individual items. So it is not a surprise for us; but this is absolutely disappointing.

  Of course it is one sidal approach. The thing is that, after the acceptance by Turkish Cypriots of the Kofi Annan’s Plan, and by the rejection of the Greek Cypriots, Greek Cypriots were rewarded by being accepted as a full member of the European Union. And the Turkish Cypriots, although they voted positively they were punished by the continuation of one sidal ambargos on trade etc. And the European Union promised to lift these ambargos on natural trade. But because of the rejection of Greek Cypriots, these unilateral, unjust ambargos are not being lifted. Now what they are asking is unilateral consession from the Turkish side on the airports and harbors issue. Therefore, we believe that no Turkish goverenment can accept this. Any Turkish government,  who would make unilateral consession on this will immediately lose it’s mode of confidence in Turkish Parliament.

 I don’t think so. The government said that: “ Unless the ambargos are lifted, the government can not move on this issue.”

 Yes, Absolutely. Those should be individual technical negotiation chapters as was in the previous enlargement process. So in those cases, the cases of previous enlargement there were no decisions to begin or to start with individual chapters. But they impose this special rule for Turkey and maybe for the new comers after Turkey to create additional problems. To give the Greek Cypriots and maybe few other countries a leverage against Turkey. So each time you start a technical chapter, we will face political problems. This is the system created. French try to use the system to create political problems to start each and every technical chapters. Now the Greek Cypriots took over on this idea. Now they try to impose political conditions just to start technical chapters. It is a little too much.

 Maybe this is the purpose of some of our citizens not willing to see Turkey as a full member. Perhaps they want to discourage Turkish citizens on support of  full membership. But obviously Turkish people support is diminishing. It was about 75%. But now it is around 59%. So it is diminishing. It fell down because of such double standarts, unjust treatments of Turkey.