ANKARA, 12 October 2004 — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged EU leaders yesterday to treat Turkey fairly and ease conditions set for its membership when they meet in December to decide whether to start accession talks with the country, Anatolia news agency reported.
“We hope and expect that member nations will reach a decision with no conditions attached and that they will allow no discrimination as regards the outcome of the negotiating process,” Erdogan told a gathering here. “We want to believe that Turkey will not be deprived of the ... treatment reserved to other candidates.”
Erdogan was referring to a report by the European Commission last week, which proclaimed Turkey ready for accession talks but said the start of negotiations would not guarantee that the country will one day join the European Union. Ankara has complained that several recommendations by the Commission on the conduct of the accession talks are tougher than procedures applied to other candidates in the past. “We want those issues to be rectified in the December decision,” Erdogan said.
President Ahmet Necdet Sezer yesterday approved the new Turkish penal code crucial to Ankara’s bid to start membership talks with the European Union, his press office said. “President Sezer sent the code to the prime minister’s office for publication” in the official gazette, said a brief statement from the presidency. The reform, which overhauls the country’s 78-year-old penal code, adapted from that of fascist Italy, was widely seen as the last legal reform required to align Turkish legislation with the EU norms Brussels sets as a condition to open membership talks with candidate nations.
In another major step, the legislation introduces life terms for perpetrators of “honor killings,” the feudal practice of killing women perceived as unvirtous, which still persists, mainly in Turkey’s rural southeast. Other amendments bring heavy jail terms for the sexual molestation of children and the trade in human organs.
In what is a first, it also stipulates life sentences for people who commit genocide and five to 10 years imprisonment for crimes against humanity. Even though the reform has generally been welcomed as a step toward gender equality, women’s groups have slammed several amendments on grounds that they are still discriminatory.
Meanwhile, Turkish police were yesterday frantically seeking an alleged mafia boss with suspected links to top officials who disappeared following his unexpected release after he and dozens of his alleged henchmen were detained week in a major police operation.
The legal jumble surrounding Sedat Peker, 34, who is accused of running a mafia gang, has sparked outrage in Turkey, where organized crime bosses are believed to have privileged personal and business ties with state officials.
