Bremen Üniversitesinde Düzenlenen Konferans (İng.)

STATEMENT OF DR. ONUR ÖYMEN
DEPUTY OF THE REPUBLICAN PEOPLE’S PARTY OF TURKEY AT THE CONFERENCE ORGANIZED BY THE BREMEN UNIVERSITY
BREMEN, 10 OCTOBER 2003

Mr. Chairman,

Distinguished guests,

I would like to thank you, first of all, for your kind invitation.
I believe that the seminar, you have organized, is very timely.
We have to exchange our views and express our mutual expectations before the Commission finalizes its report on Turkey. I am sure that the representatives of the Commission attending this conference will not fail to convey our messages to Brussels.

Mr. Deniz Baykal, the leader of my party CHP, has already expressed this morning in his keynote speech, the views and expectations of the party. I think that his comments reflect the feelings of the majority of the Turkish public opinion as well.

Now, I would like to elaborate a few points. First of all, I should underline that the reform packages adopted recently by the parliament are a product of common understandings and efforts of the government and the opposition. My party voted positively all reform packages presented by the government. At the parliamentary commissions’ level, we have participated actively to the deliberations and brought our own contributions. On some points the drafts were, in our opinion, exceeding the expectations of the Union and requirements of the Copenhagen criteria. The government finally accepted our objections and withdrew some amendments that they had originally proposed. We are now convinced that we have finished the basic amendments. So, from legal point of view, we can say that Turkish legislation is in line with laws and regulations of EU members.

As Mr. Baykal has said this morning, this does’nt mean that we will stop the reform process in Turkey. On the contrary, reforms should and will continue as is the case in other European Union countries. We are aware that in some countries, like France, even a ministry is created to deal with the reform process. But, as regards to the basic requirements of the EU expressed in Copenhagen criteria, we have no shortcomings anymore.

Now, is the time of implementation. The understanding of our party is that the implementation process should not only be limited to putting into force of the recent amendments. We have to adopt all norms accepted by European societies in all fields. Mr. Baykal mentioned corruption and lifting of immunities of parliamentarians. Those are priority matters for my party, but not the only ones. We urge the government to take into consideration the practice of other European countries while proposing draft laws to the Parliament. For that purpose, we have established a special European Committee in the Parliament to verify whether relevant draft laws are in conformity with the legislation of the European countries.

Legal reforms or adjustments cover only one part of the story. In all spheres of life, we should care to govern the country in line with the principles prevailing in European countries. For example, my party is very keen on the system of appointments. We understand that the government believes that all parties who won elections are entitled to change the top civil servants and appoint there supporters. Obviously, this is not the case in most European countries, where the merit system prevails. We have also shortcomings in health and education, environment, city-planning and scientific research. In all  these areas, we have enough qualified people; but the government should give priority to upgrading our standards.

For that matter, we have to reconsider our budget priorities. To give you an example, Turkey is among those countries in the world, who spend less money on education as a percentage of national income. We are ranking 16th from the bottom. In a country, where the population increases one million people a year, this is a very serious shortcoming and should be corrected as a matter of urgency. Again, in the death ratio of the babies, our standards are not compatible with the rest of Europe. Mainly, because of the deficiencies in health and education, Turkey ranks 96th in the World Development Index. A closer cooperation between Turkey and the European Union may help us to fill the gap. Unfortunately, the level of EU assistance to Turkey is very low compared to other candidate countries.

We know how the EU supported newly emerging democracies in Eastern Europe and make them eligible for membership. We know the projects prepared and assistance provided by EU in all these areas to Eastern European countries. But, when it comes to Turkey, there were often some obstacles in providing assistance. For instance, the fourth financial protocol, governing the economic cooperation between Turkey and the EU failed to provide Turkey 600 million dollars promised by bilateral arrangements. The same happened right after the agreement on the customs union in the beginnig of 1996, where again Greece blocked all promised contributions of the union to Turkey. Even today, the amount of assistance we receive is about one third of Bulgaria. The prospect of EU membership would play an important role on Turkey’s realization of its economic potential. To illustrate, joining a highly advanced single market would make Turkey the recipient of huge foreign investment. 2002 was not a good year due to global recession. Total direct investment in the world was 1.1 billion dollars. Turkey could only receive 800 million, namely 0.7 % of this amount, whereas Hungary’s share was 10 billion, which was a direct result of EU prospect. If you compare the size of Turkey with these countries, you may realize the discrepancy. This much about the financial cooperation. In the customs union, I should add, however, another point. We are the first and only candidate, which had concluded a customs union agreement with the EU that has profited both side, but mostly EU exporters. Since 1996, the total trade deficit between Turkey and EU amounts to 61 billion dollars. This is due to large extent, to the customs union agreement on the one hand, and some non-tariff barriers and excessive use of damping rules or other import restrictions, on the other. The inclusion of services and agricultural products to the EU may help us to balance our cooperation. But, in these two areas, where Turkey is very competitive, there was no tanbigle progress since we concluded the customs union at the end of 1995.

Now, I’m coming to the political dimension of our cooperation. I’ll make a long history short. In the last 200 years, particularly after the proclamation of Turkish Republic by Ataturk in 1923, Europe for us, was a model, a source of inspiration and a target to reach. We have educated generations of Turkish children praising European values and high human standards. During all these process of Westernization, our aim was to upgrade our standards to join European family. But we never thought that the day we ready to join Europe, some European political forces might try to block Turkey’s participation to their family. We are sorry that some political forces in Europe, including our German democrat friends are still reluctant to see Turkey as a member of the EU, irrespective of our achievements.

But, still, we notice that in some areas like appointments of civil servants or lowering the retirement age, the government is not fully observing the general rules existing in Europe.

On secularism that Mr. Baykal has put a special emphasize this morning, the general attitude of the government is far from being satisfactory. Secularism is one of the pillars of our democracy and our constitution. Any deviation from this principle may damage the basic structures of our society and may alienate Turkey from Europe. Talking about the political dimension of our cooperation, we should particularly stress the need to see a firm support from the Europe side on the membership of Turkey. Despite some positive statements of leading European personalities, I must confess that we have not observed yet, a full-fledged commitment or the expression of a clear political view. On the contrary, important political personalities like former President Giscard d’estaing and past and present CSU and CDU leaders in Germany, former Prime Minister of Belgium Mr. Mark Eyskens have expressed their opposition to Turkish membership for not so clearly defined reasons.

We remember that on 4th March 1997, the Christian democrat leaders of Europe came together in Brussels to discuss the Turkish-EU issues. At the end of the meeting, Mr. Mark Eyskens said that the general feeling in the conference was that Turkey should never join the European Union, because the EU is a civilization project. Mr. Giscard d’estaing said in so may words, that the day Turkey would enter the union, will be the final day of the EU. Other politicians like Mr. Stoiber, president of CSU and candidate in the last German elections for the German Chancellory said that in an interview with financial times that Turkey should never join the EU. Former presidents of CDU, like Mr. Stoiber and the actual president Mrs. Angela Merkel have often declared their objection to Turkish membership. Mr. Pottering, the leader of PPE faction in the European Parliament has said recently that the majority of Christian democratic parties are against Turkish membership. I can give you more examples on such statements.

So, the main problem in our membership at this moment, in my opinion is such political objections still prevailing in Europe, rather than the shortcomings of Turkey. We expect from Germans and other Europeans, who are the true defenders of tolerance, equality of people and who are againt the concepts of clash of civilizations, to be more vocal in defending Turkey’s joining to the EU, and to encourage, to combat those who shadow European civilization by trying to make it a Christian club.

In the past, Germany and some other European countries have suffered a lot from ethnic or religious discrimination. As Willy Brandt stated in 1971 at his Nobel Peace Prize speech, “Europe needs tolerance.” Now is the time to make Europe, a continent of mutual understanding, mutual respect and mutual cooperation.

Thank you.