Balfe (PPE-DE). – Mr President, first I should like to thank my colleague Mr Oostlander for letting me move up the speakers' list so that I can go back to my visitors' group.

This debate, on which there is a great degree of consensus, is not about whether Turkey joins the EU, but about what sort of country Turkey is. In the raid that was authorised by the state security corps, in the words of the Human Rights Association, and I quote, ‘all of our private notebooks, all notes, all of our computers, our files and all our reports were taken, all faxes and e-mails sent to the offices were read and some were taken away’.

Not only is this not good for Turkey, it is also highly destabilising that an agent of the state, namely the state security corps, is acting so clearly against the interests of Turkey. The message it is sending outside is that it is trying to subvert the very democracy that the Turkish Government is trying to build.

Is it not ironic that immediately after the raid the officials go to meet the foreign minister and the minister for human rights? It is our job as a Parliament to place ourselves firmly behind those people in Turkey who are promoting democracy, to make it quite clear that we support those agents of the state who are saying that this is not the way to run it and that we support people like Abdullah Gul, who clearly was deeply upset by this activity.

The fact of the matter is that in a modern democratic state, the state security corps and the military have to be subordinate to the civilian power – that is the definition of a modern democratic state. There are many people in Turkey working towards those aims and I believe that this Parliament, in passing this resolution, can give support to those people.

We are not saying yes or no to Turkey in the EU; we are saying we want to back the people of Turkey in making their country a decent, good sort of place that they will all be proud to live in.