TURKEY: A campaigner for Kurdish rights in Turkey says the country is moving fast towards European values. Ms Leyla Zana, who was jailed in Turkey because of her activities, was speaking in Brussels where she is receiving a human rights prize, nine years after she was awarded it.
Ms Zana was jailed for 15 years in 1994 for alleged links to Kurdish rebels fighting Turkish forces, and was only released this summer following vigorous pressure from the European Union.
The EU Commission recommended last week that Turkey had met the political and economic criteria, including on human rights, to start accession talks. "I can say that there has been great progress and physical change," Ms Zana told the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee yesterday. She said that, in particular, the widespread practice of torture was dying out.
"Today in some local and isolated places torture may take place, but I can easily say that it is not systematic as it was in the past."
The European Parliament awarded Ms Zana its Sakharov prize for human rights in 1995 in protest against her imprisonment. "We've waited a long time to have you here - nine years in fact," the committee's chairman, Mr Elmar Brok, said as he welcomed her.
Turkey has long been criticised for its treatment of its Kurdish population of some 12 million, mostly living in the south-east of the country. Ms Zana said that language rights had still not been fully established. But she had no doubt Turks and Kurds could live together under the umbrella of EU values.
"There is a joint yearning by both the Turkish and Kurdish people to have a supranational identity by joining the values of the European Union," she said after meeting the Parliament's president, Mr Josep Borrell.
"I hope the European Union makes more efforts and I hope Turkey takes bolder steps."