On 29 October 2016 the Erdoğan-AKP government issued Decrees No 675-676 with the Power of Law in the framework of the State of Emergency.
Some of the immediate and concrete results of these decrees are as follows:
• 10 thousand 159 teachers, health workers, academicians, ministry employees, public employees including HDP Vice-Co-Chair Sezai Temelli and the groups and deputy advisors working for our Parliamentary group have been unlawfully fired in the absence of a court decision.• Several news agencies including Dicle News Agency (DİHA) and the world’s only women’s news agency: JİNHA as well as many local papers in Kurdish and Turkish, and magazines have been closed.
• The properties of municipalities whose elected mayors were replaced by state appointed trustees have been confiscated.
• The right to defense has been further restricted in Turkey’s legal system which already is a long way from establishing justice.
• It has been ruled that university rectors will no longer be elected. They are to be appointed by the President.
Once again people are declared guilty in the absence of a court decision. Once again bans confront freedom of press and communication: Kurdish media, newspapers, radios, news agencies and televisions, websites are closed, their properties and machinery are confiscated. They are trying to stifle the voice of the Kurdish people.
The latest Decrees with Power of Law are another step towards establishing a “state of obeyers”, a “one-party-state”. The Erdoğan-AKP government continues to proceed on the path to construct a state structure wherein those who do not declare allegiance to Erdoğan and AKP will not be able have a place.
Under the State of Emergency regime which means nothing but the creation of laws to enable the exercise of exceptionally unlawful acts, the Law, rights and freedom do not exist. Under the State of Emergency regime universal human rights and democratic rights, many articles of the European Human Rights Covenant and United Nations Conventions are being violated every day, every minute.
Erdoğan-AKP government is carrying on with the process of its own coup d’etat. It is using the State of Emergency to move into the “one man rule” it has dubbed “Turkish style Presidential system”. Under the slogan “either presidential system or chaos”, this government using the 15 July coup attempt as a pretext keeps running the country through Decrees with Power of Law and monopolizes all authority in the hands of one man. All those who oppose this government are declared enemies.
We once again say to the Erdoğan-AKP government: We will not bow in to your mentality in spite of all the evil you may do and mobilize. Neither the Kurdish people and political movement nor the peace and democracy forces of Turkey will submit to such unlawfulness and kneel before you.
Saying No to this State of Emergency regime and defending democracy is a civic and human duty for all of us. It is our duty to resist against injustice, unlawfulness and State of Emergency.
Peoples’ Democratic Party
Central Executive Board
30 October 2016