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Verbatim report of proceedings
Tuesday, 5 September 2000 - Strasbourg OJ edition

Economic and social development of Turkey
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  Haarder (ELDR).(DA) Mr President, our relations with Turkey should promote democracy, stability and consistency. The path to those goals is partly by way of social and economic development, and the way to social and economic development is partly by means of foreign investment. The Union’s finance package will be an incentive to further investment in Turkey and, in the process, will also promote and consolidate democracy and human rights. We have seen this strategy succeed in former dictatorships in Southern Europe, we shall see it work in Eastern and Central Europe, and it ought also to work in Turkey. Parliament should support this strategy, and we should, at the same time, insist that, before there can be any question at all about membership negotiations, the Copenhagen criteria should be met as these relate to democracy and human rights. Finally, I would emphasise the need to rebuild the thousands of Kurdish villages razed to the ground. This ought to be an express priority in our policy on Turkey, and we must insist that the Turkish Government too make it a high priority. In the same way, we must insist that the rights of the Kurdish minority are respected, just as the rights of minorities are respected in the countries of the Union and in the other candidate States.

 
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