Turkey, Germany, Netherlands to launch project on media, judiciary relations

Turkish Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin said Wednesday the EU supported a project on media-judiciary relations which would help improve relations between the mass media and judiciary, while accurately informing the public through media. The project will be assisted by Germany and the Netherlands. Ergin said improved relations between the media and judiciary would create significant outcomes. "This project will also contribute to minimizing the problems we have encountered so far between the media and judiciary to an important extent," he said. Jean Maurice Ripert, the head of the EU Delegation to Turkey, said the EU supported the project as it was an example of the EU's support of the reform of the Turkish judiciary, for which the EU had contributed some €128 million over the last ten years. He said the EU followed all aspects of media freedom in Turkey as part of the Copenhagen political criteria that any candidate for accession to the EU must uphold. He added, "the negotiation  process and full implementation of democracy, human rights and the rule of law in Turkey are two faces of the coin." He noted that the project would assist the judiciary spokesperson system in courts, noting some 200 judges and prosecutors will be trained as spokespersons. "Our common work will enable the Turkish courts to build on the experience of EU member states in dealing with media, to inform the public of judical decisions and build public confidence in these," he said. He also announced that another project worth €2.8 million would be launched soon, aiming at a better application of the European Court of Human Rights case-law. German Ambassador to Turkey Eberhard Pohl said the project would be launched by three nations and would bring three different perspectives to benefit all the nations involved in the project. "Experts from these three different countries will have an opportunity to discuss the relations between media and judiciary in another cultural and historical setting," he said.