As it has been mentioned, the\u00a0majority of human rights\u00a0activists\u00a0in Turkey (Leila Zana among them) are of\u00a0the\u00a0opinion that\u00a0a\u00a0positive decision\u00a0on the Republic of Turkey’s application to join the European Union will contribute to the improvement of Turkey’s policy on ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities. <\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
And they have\u00a0good\u00a0reasons\u00a0for\u00a0saying this. The same reasons\u00a0human rights\u00a0activists in Latvia had when\u00a0discussions\u00a0on Latvia’s candidacy for membership of the EU\u00a0were\u00a0held. Unfortunately, there is\u00a0great\u00a0disillusionment\u00a0among Latvian human rights activists now. Yes, under\u00a0pressure\u00a0from European institutions some changes in\u00a0legislation concerning problems essential for minorities\u00a0were\u00a0made. But these changes were cosmetic. For example, the improvements\u00a0made in\u00a0the Law on languages\u00a0were intended to facilitate\u00a0the situation of only one particular linguistic minority – English speaking businessmen.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
We see\u00a0the same urgent cosmetic\u00a0steps\u00a0taking place in Turkey. For example,\u00a0the Turkish government has allowed\u00a0private language centers\u00a0to open, offering courses in Kurdish, Armenian and other tongues.\u00a0A\u00a0private language center is something essentially different from\u00a0what\u00a0we would recognize as a\u00a0school – term been used in Mr.Eurling\u00b4s report. <\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
My country, Latvia, became a member of the EU despite the fact that the Latvian authorities did not recognize the rights of linguistic minorities. It was a mistake,\u00a0for EU institutions\u00a0not to\u00a0use\u00a0Latvia’s accession process\u00a0to promote the fulfillment of the\u00a0Copenhagen Political\u00a0criteria. <\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
This history must not be repeated in the case of Turkey’s accession. We hope\u00a0that in 15 years\u00a0Turkey\u00a0will\u00a0fulfill completely\u00a0the political criteria.\u00a0We\u00a0call upon\u00a0the Commission\u00a0to\u00a0use\u00a0every opportunity to urge the Turkish government to recognize the Kurdish minority in the country and to create the conditions\u00a0necessary\u00a0for this minority\u00a0to be respected and protected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As it has been mentioned, the\u00a0majority of human rights\u00a0activists\u00a0in Turkey (Leila Zana among them) are of\u00a0the\u00a0opinion that\u00a0a\u00a0positive decision\u00a0on the Republic of Turkey’s application to join the European Union will contribute to the improvement of Turkey’s policy on ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities. \u00a0 And they have\u00a0good\u00a0reasons\u00a0for\u00a0saying this. The same reasons\u00a0human rights\u00a0activists in Latvia had when\u00a0discussions\u00a0on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eu-parliament-work","category-our-mer"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rusojuz.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rusojuz.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rusojuz.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rusojuz.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rusojuz.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rusojuz.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":815,"href":"https:\/\/rusojuz.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions\/815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rusojuz.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rusojuz.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rusojuz.lv\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}