"Open And Shut
Published: 12/22/2006
BY GUNDUZ AKTAN
RADIKAL- The EU Commission’s proposal was accepted last week and Turkey’s membership talks were suspended in eight chapters. Thus, the process of our talks was slowed down. Meanwhile, EU officials and the press stated that the EU shouldn’t close its doors to Turkey, otherwise the process of reform might stop. When the word ‘reform’ is mentioned, we think of the army being subject to civilian authority, the rights of minorities, in other words, giving collective rights to Kurds and Christians’ religious rights. It’s understood that the Justice and Development Party will continue membership talks under these conditions. In other words, we will be accepting punishment for a crime we supposedly committed by not fulfilling our ‘obligations’ in the Additional Protocol concerning Cyprus. As we won’t be able to solve the Cyprus issue within the UN before 2009, we will have to face the issue of unilaterally opening our harbors and ports to Greek Cypriots. This way we’ll postpone this crisis to the end of 2009."
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