STRASBOURG - Council of Europe Secretary General Tery Davis said on Wednesday that they were ready to extend their best support to Turkey's European Union (EU) membership process.
Turkey's EU membership process was one of the topics of the meeting between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Council of Europe Secretary General Davis.
Referring to reforms made in Turkey in the last two years, Davis said that they had received positive news from Brussels about the EU Commission's Progress Report and congratulated Turkey. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Erdogan expressed his pleasure over the decision taken by the Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe (PACE) about Turkish Cypriot parliamentarians, and thanked Davis for his support.
The reform process in Turkey was also discussed at Prime Minister Erdogan's meeting with PACE President Peter Schieder. Schieder said that he, as an Austrian parliamentarian, was in favor of Turkey's becoming a member of the Union.
Stressing that the recent problems Turkey faced at the PACE had ended, Schieder said that Turkey's reform process played an important role to this end.
(UK-ULG) 06.10.2004