10/01/2012 President
Strasbourg, 10.01.2012 – Addressing the Turkish Grand National Assembly today in Ankara, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), praised the reform process undertaken by the Turkish authorities, and welcomed the importance given to a comprehensive constitutional reform. He stressed that the constitutional referendum held in September 2010 enabled in particular the basis for progress on 12 issues addressed in the framework of the PACE “post-monitoring dialogue” with Turkey – which continued after the closing of the full monitoring procedure in 2004.
However, there are still efforts to be made in order to achieve judicial reform and to reduce the number of cases before the European Court of Human Rights, he added. In this connection, he invited the authorities to make extensive use of Council of Europe legal and technical expertise, such as that of the Venice Commission and other Council of Europe specialised bodies.
He also stressed the efforts of the Assembly and the Council of Europe in general to strengthen co-operation with neighbouring countries, both in the Arab world and Central Asia, in order to assist them in building democratic institutions.
Talking about core issues on the Council of Europe’s agenda, Mr Çavuşoğlu also underlined the importance of inter-religious and intercultural dialogue in order to cope with racism, discrimination intolerance and islamophobia. He will meet tomorrow in Istanbul religious leaders, including the Chief Rabbi of Turkey, His Holiness Patriarch Bartholomeos I and the Deputy Patriarch of the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul.
The PACE President is meeting today the President of the Republic Abdullah Gül, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Speaker of the Grand National Assembly Cemil Çiçek, Foreign Affairs Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and Justice Minister Sadullah Ergün, as well as the heads of the main political parties. His visit will continue, after Istanbul, to Hatay on the Turkish-Syrian border and to Antalya.