Post date: Jun 12, 2013 3:48:8 PM
Turkish EU Affairs Minister and Chief Negotiator Egemen Bagis says current protests incomparable with Arab Spring and won't harm EU negotiations.
PARIS, FRANCE (JUNE 12, 2013) (REUTERS) - As police cleared protesters from Taksim Square, Turkey's European Union Affairs minister and chief negotiator said on Wednesday (June 12) that the recent demonstrators could not be compared to the Arab Spring.
Speaking at the European-American Press Club in Paris, Egemen Bagis saidTurkey's history of democratic elections marked it as different from other Middle Eastern uprisings."Most of the demonstrators are naive. They are sincere. They have good, well intentions. But unfortunately there's been a campaign to create a psychology of fear. And comparing this to (the) Arab Spring would be really illogical because there were no elections -- real elections -- in either Egypt or Tunisia or Libya," Bagis told journalists.
Turkish riot police fought running battles with pockets of protesters overnight, clearing the central Istanbul square that has been the focus of nearly two weeks of protests against Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.
By dawn, Taksim Square, strewn with wreckage from bulldozed barricades, was largely deserted and taxis crossed it for the first time since the troubles started. Several hundred remained in an encampment of tents in Gezi Park abutting the square.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said on Wednesday the Turkish government was sending the wrong signal at home and abroad with its reaction to protests, describing pictures from Taksim square as disturbing.
Despite this, Bagis said that the recent protests wouldn't harm Turkish-EU negotiations.
"No, I think this should be seen as an opportunity. If Europe is serious aboutTurkey's desires to upgrade its human rights, its judicial, its right to assembly regulations, then this should remind all member states that they should not let one single country stop the opening of chapters 23 and 24, and they should issue the benchmarks on those chapters and motivate us to do more in terms of individual rights and reforms," Bagis said, referencing Turkish claims that the country was never given benchmark criteria that are needed to open EU accession chapters every candidate must conclude.
A fierce crackdown on initial protests against planned redevelopment of Gezi Park, a leafy corner of Taksim, triggered the wider protests, drawing in a broad alliance of secularists, nationalists, professional workers, unionists and students - some of whom would never before have considered sharing a political platform.
Erdogan argues that the broader mass of people are at best the unwitting tools of political extremists and terrorists and points to his 50 percent vote in the last of three successive electoral victories for his political authority.