EU Pushes Turkey on Kurdish Rights

The European Union's enlargement commissioner said today that Turkey must go further to improve cultural rights for its Kurdish minority before it gets the go ahead to begin talks on joining the 25-member bloc.

During a visit to the Kurdish south-east of the country, Günter Verheugen said Ankara must increase Kurdish language teaching and broadcasting. "I am satisfied [broadcasting] has started, with some delays, but I have to say what we have seen so far can only be the beginning," he told reporters.

The visit was the last before the European commission publishes a report next month on Turkish membership of the EU. A final decision on whether to give Turkey a date to start membership talks is due in December at a meeting of EU leaders.

Support for a Turkish membership bid is led by Britain, but France and Germany - the other big EU powers, have said they will back it if the commission offers a positive assessment on Turkey's progress on human rights.

Negotiations on the admission of a large and economically underdeveloped nation of 70 million to a bloc already in upheaval after the May enlargement and wrangling over its constitution, could, however, be expected to take many years.

The prospect of admitting a predominantly Muslim country that historically battled Christian Europe has also proved contentious within the commission. The Dutch EU commissioner, Frits Bolkestein, expressed his misgivings again yesterday over Turkey's European credentials.

"Whoever allows Turkey in will also have to accept Ukraine and Belarus. Those countries are more European than Turkey," he said in a speech published on the commission's website

"It is clear that before Turkey can enter it will certainly have to go through a transformation. At the time of its accession it will have to possess a completely different identity."

It was the second time this year that Mr Bolkestein, a centre-right free marketeer, has apparently questioned Turkey's accession. His spokesman, Jonathan Todd, later said that Mr Bolkestein did not oppose Turkish membership and did not want to prejudice the commission's final report.

Turkey has been knocking at the EU's door for decades but is the only candidate country yet to start formal accession talks, partly because it is not deemed to have met EU standards on political freedoms and human rights.

Ankara has kept a tight lid on the use of the Kurdish language for decades, seeing it as a political rallying point for separatists, but a swath of reforms aimed at winning a start date for EU talks paved the way in June for the first, very limited Kurdish-language broadcasts on state radio and television.

The region has suffered in a 20-year separatist conflict in which more than 30,000 people have been killed, making it a major arena for human rights abuses.

Tens of thousands of Kurds fled or were evacuated from their homes during the worst of the bloodshed, which largely subsided after the capture of guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1999.

Mr Verheugen said Turkey also needed to step up efforts to help displaced Kurds return to villages destroyed in the conflict. "I think one should strongly support the wish of people to return to their villages," he said.