Elina Järvenpää

Accession of Turkey to the European Union
seen from the Perspective of Kurdish people living in Turkey
Draft (to be continued and completed)


Introduction

As the European Council in December 1999 decided in Helsinki that Turkey is a candidate for accession, a conference was also held in Helsinki by human rights activists, Kurds and others. The conference was named The Development of Democracy and the Situation of Minorities in Turkey: Particularly on the Situation and Future of the Kurdish Population in Turkey Regarding the Membership of Turkey in the European Union. The conference was organized by the Peace for the Kurds Forum of Finland and the Peace Education Institute in Helsinki with the support of Kurds living in Finland.

Already then the participating Kurds expressed their wishes that through the process of Turkey accessing the EU, the EU could force Turkey change her policy towards her Kurdish people.

In Helsinki 1999 the European Council considered that Turkey has "the basic features of a democratic system while at the same time displaying serious shortcomings in terms of human rights and protection of minorities. In 2002, the EU Commission noted in its Regular Report that the decision on the candidate status of Turkey had encouraged the country to make noticeable progress with the adoption of a series of fundamental, but still limited, reforms. At that time, it was clear that most of those measures had yet to be implemented and that many other issues required to meet the Copenhagen political criteria had yet to be addressed. On that basis, the European Council decided in December 2002 to re-examine Turkey's fulfilment of the political criteria at the end of 2004." (EC2004b, p. 11)

This report is a result of observations and discussions made by a delegation of three members of The Peace for the Kurds Forum of Finland during a trip to Southeast Turkey in the beginning of November 2004, of a meeting with the delegation of the DEHAP party visiting Finland on November 17th – 19th, 2004, and of a research on Internet sites and printed publications concerning the same issue. The aim of the delegation was to observe the present situation in the Kurdish areas of Turkey regarding especially human rights issues and civil society after the changes made in Turkey in recent years.

The delegates have received economic support from the Ministry of Education and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, security support from the Human Rights Group of the Finnish Parliament and support in many ways from Kurds living mostly in Finland and in Turkey.

The program of the delegation was mostly common during the time of 3rd to 9th of November. Because Kristiina Koivunen in her report has written about the interviews made partly together by the delegation with several persons in Turkey I will focus mostly on the demands of Kurds for the accession of Turkey to the EU, on the situation of civil society and on the constitution of Turkey. In this first draft, however, there is not yet much material on civil society and the constitution.