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ANKARA; Babacan: Turkey is more 'open' with EU process

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  • ANKARA; Babacan: Turkey is more 'open' with EU process

    The New ANatolian, Turkey
    Feb 2 2007

    Babacan: Turkey is more 'open' with EU process


    Turkey's chief European Union talks negotiator Ali Babacan yesterday
    touted Turkey's rapid transformation toward openness, saying, "Turkey
    has become very open, very fast."

    Babacan, in an interview with Business Week magazine, stated that the
    assassination of Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink last month
    "looks like an anachronism." It's not compatible with the open
    society we are looking for, he said.

    Dink was shot dead on Jan. 19, outside the offices of his Agos weekly
    in Istanbul.

    Babacan also underlined that a "reform in mentality" was still needed
    in Turkey and that certain things "were not changing overnight."

    Business Week commented that Turkey has striven to come up to EU
    standards of openness to prepare its bid to join the Union.

    "A whole new media web has sprung up in the Eurasian nation of 75
    million people, where almost none existed before," the magazine said.

    "From a single state-owned TV station, more than 300 channels have
    emerged," said the magazine. "Eleven hundred radio stations crowd the
    airwaves. Every private school is now linked to the Internet, and the
    the government is distributing 400,000 PCs to pupils."
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