BRUSSELS/ANKARA, 19 September 2004 — The European Commission said yesterday it wanted to know from Ankara if its penal code reforms, including a controversial ban on adultery, will be in place or changed before a key EU decision on talks next month.
The Turkish government put its penal code reform on hold on Thursday after the center-left opposition blocked its efforts to include the clause criminalizing adultery. Penal code reforms are a step the EU sees as crucial if it is to open talks on Turkish EU membership.
“We have a problem of timing,” Enlargement Commissioner Guenter Verheugen told reporters after talks with Turkey’s ambassador to the EU, Oguz Demiralp. “So far our assessment was based on the assumption that the penal code would be adopted before the Commission must make its decision.”
He said he understood the adoption of the code had been postponed by Ankara and no new date had been set. “I have asked the ambassador to get clarification from his government whether and when the penal code will be adopted, and whether it will be substantially changed,” Verheugen added.
The Commission is due to give its assessment on Oct. 6 on whether Turkey is ready to start accession talks with the bloc, and this has been thrown into question by Ankara’s delays to adopting the code. “The Commission is working night and day to prepare the package for adoption ... on Oct. 6,” Verheugen said but he made clear the report would still come out on Oct. 6. Asked if there could be a delay, he replied: “Absolutely not ... I do not see a reason why we should delay.”
Meanwhile, the Turkish Parliament went into recess yesterday until Oct. 1, leaving the penal code reform package in limbo and unlikely to be enacted before the release of a vital EU report on whether or not to start membership talks with Turkey, parliamentary sources said.
This means that the bill aiming to overhaul the country’s 78-year-old criminal code and bring it up to European standards stands little chance of being enacted before the EU report date, unless the Parliament is once again called into emergency session before Oct. 1.
Yesterday morning, Parliament closed automatically until its official starting date of Oct. 1 when, after the sitting was declared open, the roll call revealed that the quorum of 184 had not been reached. The reform package was almost complete, with 343 of its 346 articles voted in record time, when the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan unexpectedly blocked it on Thursday, in what observers saw as a move to reintroduce a clause that would make adultery a punishable crime.
