Deputy Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz said that Turkey...

Deputy Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz said that Turkey needs to take action as soon as possible to remedy shortcomings pointed out in the recent EU report on Turkey's progress towards membership. The report said Turkey had not yet fully met the criteria for opening accession talks.
Yilmaz said the report did mention progress made by Turkey in various areas but also made criticisms of the country's performance on human rights and democratisation, most of which were "unfortunately accurate".
In response to a question from one journalist as to whether or not the government would be able to include in the new National Programme a concrete promise to eliminate the death penalty, Yilmaz answered as follows: "Perhaps. We had envisaged the elimination of the death penalty in the medium term, but we made an important step on this topic in the short term with the constitutional amendment. We limited the death penalty only to certain very specific crimes. Now, when the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) comes to the TBMM [Turkish Grand National Assembly], a compromise could be reached to move up our commitment on this even more in the National Programme."