FIFTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE EU TURKEY AND THE KURDS

FIFTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE EU, TURKEY AND THE KURDS
At the moment as you know in the EU parliament we are debating resolutions and
progress reports as they are called on the accession of Turkey to the European Union.
I think its very clear in this reports that there is a degree of change but there’s still a
long way to go because if you look at the 21007 report for example, the Commission
stated that the Turkish authorities should respect the rights of the Kurdish minority
but this is constantly recalled in all the reports and we still have to keep banging home
the same point every time you look at a commission report. So I’ve tailored a number
of amendments myself to ensure that we can focus more clearly on the Kurdish issue
in the report and spell out exactly what sort of conditions we want to see fulfilled in
the months and years to come. This report will be debated next week and like all of
you I’m sure, I feel convinced that the Turkish authorities must do far more to find a
solution to this.
And in closing Id just like to refer to the motto of the EU namely ‘Unity in Diversity’
and I would suggest that we allow this to become an example for Turkish society
whereby the Kurdish people with their rich language and culture can be accepted and
why not indeed be embraced as an added value for Turkey.
Thank you for your kind attention.
Eurig Wyn
In my cultural intervention here in the debate its worth considering what we have
achieved to date in Wales, which will be relevant of course to the aims of the Kurdish
autonomous cultural movement and any advice that we can convey to you. Welsh
doesn’t have full official status but what’s called co-official status. For example, ministers
will be able to speak Welsh in future at European Council meetings. Members of
the committee of the regions, a committee I was a member of at one time, can speak
Welsh in its plenary sessions. Citizens will be able to correspond, to write letters from
now on to the European institutions through the medium of the welsh language, and
the right also will be accorded to deposit translations of European Union documents
in the council of archives. These as well should be the aims, the long-term aims of the
Kurds in its cultural linguistic debate with the European Union.
I was a member of the petitions committee at one stage in the Parliament and I don’t
see any reason why a Kurd or a Kurdish delegation, not from Turkey but from a state
that is a member of the EU, why they should not bring a case before the Petitions
Committee on the injustice meted out to the Kurdish language by the Turkish state.
20% of the population of Wales speak Welsh; our population is 3 million, 70% of the
population in my committee, in West North Wales, speak the language as their first
language. Far more as well, it’s worth stressing, than the Irish in Ireland who have full
official status, and are beginning to use their language now far more often in the EU
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