ANKARA - Turkey will live up to its promise to sign an EU-requested accord concerning Cyprus and keep up efforts to enhance its democracy, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in Brussels on Tuesday.
Speaking to Turkish reporters at a news conference broadcast live on Turkish television, Erdogan said he discussed the issue of Cyprus with his Greek counterpart Costas Karamanlis at a meeting in Brussels Monday.
"I told him that we will stand behind our promise" to sign the protocol demanded by the European Union, he said.
The EU has made the opening of accession talks with Ankara, set for October 3, conditional on the signing of a protocol that would extend an already-existing Turkey-EU association agreement to cover 10 new members, including Cyprus.
Ankara refuses to endorse the internationally-recognized Greek Cypriot government of Cyprus, and instead recognizes the breakaway Turkish Cypriot republic in the north of the long-divided island.
The government has said it will sign the protocol in time, but maintains that the move will not amount to formal recognition of the Greek Cypriots.
Erdogan also brushed aside concerns both at home and in the EU that his government is failing to fully enforce respect for human rights, sparked by a heavy-handed police response to an unauthorized women's demonstration earlier this month.
Referring to his own four-month imprisonment for sedition in the late 1990s over a poem with Islamist messages he recited at a political rally, Erdogan said he had personally been a victim of restrictions on freedoms in Turkey.
"We are very well aware of the importance of this issue," he said. "We will keep up our efforts to implement in the best way our approach in favor of freedoms."
Erdogan blamed the beating of women at the March 6 demonstration in Istanbul on a small number of policemen and urged the EU not to judge Turkey's commitment to human rights norms on the basis of "individual mistakes."
"It will be unfair to make the Turkish state pay the cost of individual mistakes," he said.
Six officers were suspended after the demonstration, at which the security forces used truncheons and tear gas against the protestors. Several officers were seen hitting and kicking women who had fallen to the ground.

03/22/2005 20:24 GMT