ANKARA (Hetq)–Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan this week shot back at the European Union for criticizing freedom of press in Turkey in its annual progress report on the Islamic country, saying that Europe had more to gain from Turkey’s membership than it did and that the European Union would never be a global power if it refused to admit Turkey.
The EU progress report pointed out that journalists in Turkey routinely face prosecution and conviction for writing about “taboo” subjects. An irritated Erdogan shot back saying that freedoms, including those of the press are not limitless.
“Is the freedom of press limitless? It is limited… Freedoms will never be limitless and the judicial dimension will always exist,” Erdogan said at a news conference before leaving for South Korea to attend the G-20 summit.
In its report, the European Union Commission concluded that Turkey progressed towards meeting the criteria of the EU accession process, especially due to the constitutional reform package. The Commission pointed out the need for further improvement of fundamental rights, particularly in implementing freedom of expression in practice.
EU’s Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule stated: “Despite overall progress in 2009, we are concerned that Turkey’s accession process is losing its momentum. The key to changing this is primarily with Turkey, which is expected to fully implement its current contractual relations with the EU – the Customs Union – before it can gear up to full membership of the Union.”
The report singled out Turkey’s failure to open its ports and airports to shipping from Greek Cyprus and the fact that no progress has been made in normalizing relations between Turkey and Greek Cyprus and Armenia as stumbling blocks to Turkish EU accession.
It also noted the fact the murder trial of slain Agos editor Hrant Dink is still underway, almost three years after the Turkish-Armenian journalist was slain.
Erdogan says eruope needs turkey.Who does erdogan think he & turkey is?,remind him & turkish poeple that superpower is a country with strong ecomny & miltary.eruope have one most a dvance ecomny in world & products that cant match, even with cheap labor from asia.mitary are the most adance aswell in miltary spending, training & equipment too. Mistakes of turkey with large ecomny & part of G20 due its large population not services or productivety ,turkey ecomny is 750 billion a year & per capital less than $9000 each person thats third world standard.Miltary no 500 000 person cannot win a war with 3000 kurdish freedum fighters with basic guns,lost every with war with russia, when then 2 balkan christains country with small population turkey comes off second best,1 victory was 75 million turks vs cyprus 500 000 WIth one 1000 greek soilders during civil war on island between the greeks on island no help from main land because of distance, no air support or sea , supplies,try the same on mainland of greece & see how far you get.Not like israle toke on 6 arab nation of 240 million in 6 days thats miltary,To my turkish friend wash the paint off your face becuase I think your eyes painted on .
Dear Nickolas
You have a delusion here or got the same old thinking as classifing that turkey is a third world country. It is not my business to convince you that turkey is getting stronger and eventualy will be superpower.I know sometimes this facts has been execurated by the turkish government.First of all 9000 dollars per capita isn’t a first class economy but bear in mind that about %30 of the transactions aren’t recorded in turkey. I am sure that you haven’t heard that some turkish defence companies signed contracts with some middleeastern and asian countries about selling advanced wepons worth billion of dollars.The turkish economy is capable of producing high quality and sofisticated products and exports 60% of its production to the europen countries. Did you know that the turkish companies have delivered 20 billion dollars job in the middle east alone in 2009. Do you have any idea why 5 to 6 million turkish people have returned from Europe to Turkey during the last two decades. I am one of them planning to return to Turkey as well. Regarding with your comment about kurdish uprising. You can go out and kill as many people as you like before you are caught. This is exactly what is happening. What you are saying is like America can not deal with a few thousand Alkaida members which is totaly wrong.
EU’s Global power rests on Turkey? LOL, Mr.Erdogan, must be experiencing ‘Senior Moments’. Rather than acting as a ‘regional power’, he should be reminded that the United States and NATO are the guarantors of Turkey’s safety and existence in the region. Militarized and fanatical Turkey is a NO MATCH for Russia.
Such is the extreme arrogance of this Turkish Muslim fanatics Trojan horse – that’s what they are! Imagine, having the nerve to hold EU at ransom – no wonder the Muslim fanatics are confident that EU will be again Ottomanized-Arabicized in another 10 years! BUt do I blame these Muslim fanatics – no! It’s the treacherous Western Left leaders who have pushed for dominant Islamic migration into the EU until it’s beyond repair now – in order to secure votes and dominant power for them. Because, the Left who will keep on compromising more and more on individuals’ personal liberty for the sake of a unified powerful ‘political community’ are willing to compromise on similar Islamic ideological hatred on such individual liberty! Thus, the Left and Muslim fanatics share the same common goal – to abolish both individual freedom and individual justice; just to gain dominant political power! The Western Left are basically selling out the West/Judeo-Christian civilization to the enemy for the sake of their Godless greed!
Dear Katharina
The European countries are not becoming islamic countries as the turkish immigrant are all over the continent. Instead , They are returning bact to turkey. I believe that any religion must be strictly away from the politic as it may become like a drug addiction.We must be honest that Turkey is waiting for 50 years to join the EU but some much poor countries are now in the EU and this tells us something needs to be done. Turkey must act indipendently no matter what the EU says or want us to do . The turkish economy has florished for the last 2 decades so we do not need to deal with the EU regulations anymore. For example, one simple and easy step for the turkish government is to kick the armenian forces out from Azerbaijan territorries