State supports Turkey's EU bid, says McAleese !

MARY FITZGERALD Foreign Affairs Correspondent in Ankara !

IRELAND REMAINS a strong supporter of Turkey's accession to the EU, President Mary McAleese said on the second day of her official visit to the country yesterday.

The issue was the focus of "extensive" discussions during Mrs McAleese's hour-long meeting with Turkey's president Abdullah Gul. Speaking to reporters afterwards, Mrs McAleese noted that Ireland had backed Turkish accession from the outset.

"That remains the position," she said. "We strongly support every effort the Turkish government is making to meet the accession requirements . . . and everything it is doing to galvanise momentum towards accession."

Mrs McAleese said Ireland was aware, from experience, that the accession process could be difficult but, she added, "the vision for Europe that lies beyond it and the vision for all of us is a prize worth working for".

Mr Gul, who told The Irish Times earlier this week that full EU membership remained Turkey's most important strategic objective, said Ankara appreciated Ireland's support. He expressed hope that Mrs McAleese's visit, the first by an Irish head of state, would further strengthen ties between the two countries.

A Turkish journalist asked Mrs McAleese about the continuing controversy surrounding the killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915. Turkey recently recalled its ambassador to Washington following a US congressional committee vote describing the massacres as genocide.

The President replied that Ireland had no official position on the matter. "Of all people, the Irish understand very well the fracturing of historic memory and how people take very, very different views of events that occur in history," Mrs McAleese said.

"I think there is probably no place more qualified to stay out of an argument than Ireland."

Drawing on the experience of the Northern Ireland peace process, Mrs McAleese spoke of the importance of healing.

"We can understand the dreadful sense of loss that people endured, and we also understand in a very special way how important it is that memory is given a chance to heal," she said. "We would certainly be very strongly supportive of all efforts in today's world to heal memory and to try to achieve friendship in this generation - I think that is true both of the issue in relation to Armenia and in relation to the Kurds."

Earlier, Mrs McAleese laid a wreath at the tomb of Turkey's founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who led Turkish forces against British, Australian and New Zealand troops at Gallipoli during the first World War. The President will travel to Gallipoli today for a commemorative event in honour of the nearly 4,000 Irishmen who died during the ill-fated 1915 campaign.

Mrs McAleese, who wrote in the mausoleum visitors' book that she had admired Ataturk since childhood, paid tribute to the way Turkey had "nurtured a sense of shared selflessness and sorrow" over those who died at Gallipoli.

The Irishmen who fought there returned to an Ireland "that was divided in its opinion" of them, she noted. "We in our time are trying now to heal that platform of memory, to acknowledge them, as Ataturk did, as the sons of all of us, for whom we can feel sorrow and compassion and whose memory we can honour."

The first World War, Mrs McAleese said, was a turning point for Ireland, in that it eventually led to independence, and for Turkey, in that it led to the formation of the Turkish republic.

"These things unite us now and they surely, hopefully, also teach us to use what time and opportunities we have in this generation, with the common values we share, to work for a world that is characterised by good neighbourliness and peace."

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