Turkey needs no tension but EU move, says Dogan

"Turkey does not need tension. We need to dedicate all our power and energy to the reforms that will bring full membership to the European Union," Dogan said in a letter sent to Huseyin Gulerce, a columnist for pro-AKP daily Zaman, and published in Friday's edition of the newspaper. Tensions have flared over the past weeks between the government and the country's largest independent media group, Dogan Holding, over its coverage of corruption allegations that surrounded Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the AKP. Erdogan had launched a war against the Dogan Media Group.The issue has prompted debate about press freedom in the European Union candidate country. In the latest wave of his attacks Erdogan urged boycott on all Dogan Group media critical of the government. Gulerce listed a litany of alleged Dogan business irregularities. In a point-by-point response to Gulerce, Dogan said it is the duty of the news media to publish and broadcast the news about the legal case in Germany on the fraud allegations on the religious charity Deniz Feneri and that all the fighting was created by Erdogan, not the Dogan group."All our statements are limited to responding to the allegations and threats by Mr. Prime Minister and are defensive," he said, according to the letter's translation by the Turkish Daily News. "The fact that the corruption case was proved through the decision of the German court to convict the suspects, proves that all the allegations against our group for these publications and broadcasts are false and unfair."

TURKEY SHOULD FOCUS ON EU

Emphasizing the importance of the implementation of the EU reforms, Dogan said Turkey needs a reconciliation environment in which to carry out EU reforms and that internal conflicts harm the EU process.He said the Dogan group previously extended great support to the government in this direction until 2005 when the accession negotiations started, but upon the commencement of negotiations at the end of 2005, the government lost its enthusiasm for them."The reconciliation atmosphere required for the EU reforms are disappearing and Turkey is losing its perspective, since all these discussions became prevalent after Mr. Prime Minister pulled the trigger and the tension rose. The prime minister's conflict and tension strategy which targets us has unfortunately harmed the EU process at most," he said.Dogan said he believed that when Turkey reached full membership in the EU, the controversial issues of the government and media, as well as media and trade, that form the basis of current controversies would be off the agenda."In a country where the EU rules and standards prevail, governments will lose their power to define the conditions of economy and the market economy will run in line with actual competition conditions and be based on a fair platform on which the public authority behaves equally to all actors in the market," he said, adding that the Dogan Group is ready to fulfill all existing EU criteria for media and in other fields.Dogan is the largest independent media group in Turkey and Hurriyet is its admiralship.