ISTANBUL, 17 June 2006 — Turkey will maintain its position on keeping its ports closed to Greek-Cypriot ships and planes even if this leads to a suspension of membership talks with the European Union, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday. “As long as the isolation (of Turkish-Cyprus) continues, we will take no action on ... (opening Turkey’s ports and airports). If (EU) negotiations stop, so be it,” Erdogan told a gathering of businessmen in Istanbul.
Turkey is required by the EU to open its ports to the use of the internationally-recognized Cypriot government in the Greek-populated south of the divided island under a customs union agreement extended to all 25 members of the bloc. But Ankara refuses to do so until international restrictions on the breakaway Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) are lifted.
The EU promised financial assistance to the TRNC after it overwhelmingly voted in April 2004 in favor of a UN plan to reunify the island, but the aid has been blocked by the Cypriot government, which rejected the plan. Turkey also refuses to recognize the Cypriot government until a permanent political settlement is found to the division of the island.
Meanwhile, dozens of mayors from Turkey’s troubled southeast could go to jail for sending a letter to Denmark’s prime minister, who said that would go against the values of the EU which Turkey is hoping to join. A state prosecutor has charged 56 mayors with “knowingly and willingly helping” the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) when they urged Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen not to close the Danish-based Kurdish broadcaster Roj TV.
No date has been set for the trial and the criminal court must still accept the charges for the case to go ahead. The mayors could face up to 10 years in jail. Turkey accuses Roj of being a mouthpiece of the separatist PKK, which took up arms against the Turkish state in 1984 with the aim of carving out an ethnic homeland. More than 30,000 people, mostly Kurds, have been killed in that conflict.
In the letter sent to Rasmussen last December, the mayors of some of the largest cities in the southeast urged him to resist any pressure from Ankara to close down Roj TV, which they said was necessary for democracy in Turkey.
