4th Int. Conf. on the EU, Turkey and the Kurds

Editor’s note

The fourth annual EU-Turkey Civic Commission (EUTCC) Conference was held on 3-4 December 2007 at the European Parliament in Brussels. The event was hosted by the founders of the EUTCC, namely, the Bar Human Rights Committee of
England and Wales (UK); the Kurdish Human Rights Project (UK); medico international (Germany); and the Rafto Foundation (Norway), and was supported by members of the European Parliament. The conference was dedicated to the
memory of the Kurdish writer Mehmed Uzun, the principle pioneer of modern Kurdish literature, who died on 10 October 2007.

This publication sets out the speeches and papers of the 2007 Conference, including the Final Resolutions, in order to give an idea of the key issues discussed over the 2 days of the conference, although not all remarks by moderators have been included. A brief account of the background to the Conference can be found below; for a more comprehensive guide to the accession process and related recent developments in Turkey, the Background Paper that was given to Conference delegates is included in this publication (Appendix 1).

For the purposes of publication, the speeches reproduced here have been edited and in some cases abridged or transcribed from the translations made at the conference on each day. Where given, the title of each speech has been included. Where speeches were submitted to the publisher as papers, author’s footnotes have been retained.

The opinions expressed in this work do not necessarily represent the views of the EUTCC.