BY FERAI TINC
HURRIYET- The confusion caused by the recent minority report marked an administrative failure. Deputy Chief of General Staff Gen. Ilker Basbug’s statements broke the government’s silence. If the reason for this silence is concern over making a mistake before the Dec. 17 European Union summit, has this been successful? If some believe that we’ll avoid this problem of a timetable or date after our membership talks begin, I’ll warn them now that they are fooling themselves. From here on out, we will always face a new date during the negotiation process. As long as the issues are negotiated, each line will have a timetable. Of course the government doesn’t have to adopt the minority report, but Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a press conference that it wasn’t a report which had been asked for. This way he left this group of people announcing their view to twist in the wind, and this wasn’t right. First of all, it’s confusing. The Prime Ministry’s Human Rights Advisory Board is preparing reports on 13 different issues, and 12 of them are ready. I wonder if the government doesn’t want all these reports, or only the one concerning minorities.
This board was established in 2000, during the Helsinki summit, when Turkey first became a candidate country. Its aim is to check whether Turkey is fulfilling the Copenhagen criteria – in other words, to show Brussels that Ankara is determined to implement them. The latest progress report stated that it hadn’t prepared the report yet. However, 12 of those reports were ready. The report was accepted by the board, but the government ignored the board due to criticism of the report’s context. These are thorny issues, and we’ll have to solve them with or without the EU. If there isn’t a strong political leadership and the government repeats its mistakes, unwanted fights and disputes will break out all over again. The process of EU membership makes us responsible for introducing ourselves to the European public. In addition, domestic public opinion should know what the EU is, what it wants from us, and the pros and cons of this process.