Turkey vows commitment to reforms

Turkish leaders, taking the global activities to mark the 55th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as an opportunity on Wednesday, also renewed their call for international efforts to cope with terrorism, saying failure to fight terrorism would hamper human rights steps.

To coincide with Human Rights Day, Turkish authorities held meetings with Council of Europe and European Union Commission officials in Ankara to assess government efforts aimed at improving human rights standards.

As part of its bid to join the European Union, Turkish government has embarked on attempts to bring Turkish laws into line with EU standards, improve prison conditions and modernize the judiciary.

EU officials have cited poor human rights standards in Turkey as one of the chief obstacles for the country’s bid to become a member. Praising government achievements to pass several reform laws, the EU said however that implementation of passed reforms required more effort.

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul pledged on Wednesday to press ahead with human rights reforms and said Turkey would not take its "special circumstances" as a pretext to hamper reform efforts.

"Government’s chief objective is to bring human rights standards in Turkey to the level in the civilized world," Gul told a meeting of Parliament’s Human Rights Commission and human rights organizations.

"No state can profess to have a human rights understanding of its own. No state can say that other states cannot intervene in its domestic affairs as long as it concerns human rights matters," Gul said, emphasizing that the universal nature of human rights issues did not allow such characterizations.
Progress needs praise

Gul said his government had done a lot over the last month, since the EU Commission released a progress report to assess Turkey’s membership preparations.

Gul noted government steps to ratify all of the UN treaties on human rights, to amend regulations of the military-dominated National Security Council, introduce regulations to allow education and broadcasting in languages other than Turkish.

In another major step, he said a draft bill envisaging transparency in defense expenditures is about to be passed in Parliament.
Bitter criticism from Elkatmis

Mehmet Elkatmis, heading Parliament’s Human Rights Commission, complained it was hard to talk about existence of fully developed human rights standards despite government efforts.

"It is impossible to talk about human rights in a country where there are secret regulations, ‘social engineering’, and Western Work Group," Elkatmis said.

He was referring to an official body, which is responsible for watching over extreme Islamist activities through secret intelligence activities.
International aspect of struggle for human rights

In messages to mark the World Human Rights Day, President Ahmet Necdet Sezer and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said fight against human rights violations would be incomplete without international cooperation and called for global efforts to fight terrorism.

"Terrorism is a major obstacle for realization of human rights and a human rights violation. The entire humanity and all states of the world should unite efforts to overcome human rights problems and eradicate terrorism," Sezer said in his message.

"The rightness of our argument that terrorism, which ignores the most basic human rights and constitutes a serious threat to legal order and democracy, is a violation of human rights has been painfully proven once again by the terror attacks in Istanbul last month," Erdogan said.

"Fight against human rights violations requires international effort. One aspect of it should be the struggle against terrorism," the prime minister went on.