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| Fifth Annual EUTCC Conference Comes to an End |
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This year's EU-Turkey Civic Commission (EUTCC) conference has concluded at the European Parliament in Brussels. Themed 'Time for Change in Turkey!', the Fifth International Conference on the EU, Turkey and the Kurds was dedicated to the memory of the late EUTCC and KHRP Patron Harold Pinter. The third and final session of the conference, entitled 'Ongoing Conflict: Different Perspectives', included speeches by KHRP Chairman Mark Muller QC and Legal Team member Dr Susan Breau. Mark Muller expressed hope that once the upcoming elections in Turkey have passed, the political atmosphere will be more conducive to genuine engagement with the conflict in the Kurdish regions and reforms geared towards the EU accession process. He called on the international community to lend support and expertise to help reach a resolution. Susan Breau set out the international legal framework surrounding cross-border attacks in northern Iraq by the Turkish and Iranian militaries. Earlier in the day, speaking on the theme of 'Constitutional Reforms and the Impact on EU Accession', the prominent Turkish journalist Cengiz Candar emphasized the need for Turkey's constitution to be amended and for a framework for positive discrimination to be put into place, as well as the belief that Turkey was on a slow but deliberate track towards reform. The conference also welcomed an announcement by Francis Wurtz MEP that the Conference of the Presidents of the European Parliament had passed a decision in relation to legal proceedings in Turkey against the Sakharov Prize-winning Kurdish politician Layla Zana. The conference ended with a call for the EU to strongly and publicly support all EU requirements concerning democratic and legal reform within Turkey. A full set of resolutions will be published in due course and will be available on the EUTCC website. A translation of this press release into Arabic and Sorani is available here.
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