(AKI) - EU candidate country Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyp Erdogan on Thursday called for "objective rules for our entry process to the European Union."| I'd say the rules should start with being in Europe, not Asia Minor. |
| And not necessarily all parts of Europe, given today's Macedonia story ... |
He said Italy's support was crucial to this dynamic and described it as "the country that has best understood Turkey's potential contribution to Europe."
The reforms Turkey must implement to qualify for EU membership "do not just serve to meet the EU's requirements for membership but also to improve our quality of life as citizens," he said.
Turkey's justice minister Mehmet Ali Sahin on Tuesday announced that a new bill would in the next few days be tabled in the Turkish parliament modifying Article 301 of the Turkish penal code which criminalises "insulting Turkishness."
Article 301 has often been invoked by nationalists against those who argue that the Ottoman empire committed genocide against Armenians around the time of World War I. Nobel-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk and murdered Turkish-Armenian writer Hrant Dink were both prosecuted under the law for their comments on the mass killings of Armenians.