Tomorrow at 14:00, the Norwegian Helsinki Committee and the Human Rights Committee of the Norwegian Medical Association co-host a seminar at the Human Rights HOuse in Oslo on Human Rights Developments in Turkey: The Impact of the EU Reform Process on the Fight Against Torture. From Turkey, the two key speakers are Yavuz Önen, President, and Metin Bakkalci, Executive Director of the Turkish Human Rights Foundation. (15-APR-07)
  
Based on the Norwegian Helsinki Comittee´s invitation to the seminar, this article has been prepared for publication here by HRHF / Niels Jacob Harbitz.

Turkey officially started negotiations on EU membership on 3 October 2005. The decision by the EU to start these negotiations signalled that it accepted that legal amendments in the field of human rights and fundamental freedoms made by Turkey did fulfil the 1993 Copenhagen criteria. The EU candidacy process has helped to accelerate progress on legal provisions, including improvements in the field of human rights. The death penalty has been abolished, tougher measures have been brought in against torture and the penal code has been overhauled. There have also been reforms in the areas of women´s rights and Kurdish culture, language, education and broadcasting.

Crackdown on protests give reasons for concern
But by the beginning of 2005, due to both local and regional developments, the pace of progress slowed down in several fields, and some old patterns of abuse were re- emerging. In 2006, new legislation against terrorism and security service brutality in cracking down popular protests in Diyarbakir and other Kurdish cities gave reason to particular concern. At the Seminar an updated view about the human rights situation will be presented. The Turkish Human Rights Foundation is a leading Turkish human rights organisation, which has specialised in treatment of torture victims and in human rights monitoring.

Contact person: 
Gunnar M. Karlsen,
Deputy Secretary General,
The Norwegian Helsinki Committee

Den norske Helsingforskomité: www.nhc.no