Turkey's move to civilian rule gets praise from EU

The EU welcomes Ankara's efforts to end the age of military tutelage and consolidate civilian rule over Turkey, its envoy to Turkey has said. "There's no doubt that we support this normalization (in civil-military relations)," Jean-Maurice Ripert told journalists yesterday. "The mainstreaming of the role of the army under civilian control is one of the bases of civilian democracy. Generally speaking, any country should face its past," Ripert said, adding that this notion made possible the foundation of the EU. Ripert however, said the issue of arrested MPs was essentially incomprehensible to any EU citizen. "For any EU citizen, it's strange that there are arrested deputies. We understand that this is a very complicated, difficult and strange issue. The situation is very complicated because the lawmakers were already in prison when they were nominated to run for Parliament and because the Supreme Election Board (YSK) did not reject their applications since they had not been convicted," he said.