Parliamentary question - E-3874/2007Parliamentary question
E-3874/2007

Cancellation of a concert by a Greek singer in Turkey for nationalist reasons

WRITTEN QUESTION E-3874/07
by Stavros Lambrinidis (PSE) , Nikolaos Sifunakis (PSE) and Panagiotis Beglitis (PSE)
to the Commission

The Turkish authorities in Istanbul recently decided to cancel the concert by the Greek singer and Unesco international goodwill ambassador Giorgos Dalaras, claiming that missing papers prevented the necessary permit being issued, although the permit had already been granted one month previously. The concert by Dalaras was to have taken place during an international congress under the aegis of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. Press reports suggest that the real reason for the concert’s cancellation is that nationalist groups in Turkey have recently been threatening the Prefecture of Istanbul that, if it allowed the concert to go ahead, they would provoke such unrest that there might even be fatalities. At the same time, a large section of the Turkish press had already stirred up a climate of hostility to Giorgos Dalaras, representing him as ‘an enemy of Turkey’. However, Posta, a large-circulation newspaper in Turkey, strongly criticised the Turkish authorities, considering that this kind of behaviour was not appropriate in Turkey, when Istanbul was preparing to become the European Capital of Culture in 2010.

With regard to the above, I ask the Commission the following questions:

OJ C 45, 16/02/2008