Kerestecioğlu: ICC can be a very effective institution for universal jurisdiction against war crimes and crimes against humanity


Our İstanbul MP Ms. Filiz Kerestecioğlu gave a speech at Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe's session titled Co-operation with the International Criminal Court: towards a concrete and expanded commitment.


Thank you president, 

Dear Colleagues,

First I would like to thank reporter Mr Alain DESTEXHE on behalf of United European Left Group, for bring-ing this crucial topic before the Council. This report is very critical as it calls Turkey and five other Member States to action that have not yet ratified the Rome Statute and affirmed their commitment to ICC.

Turkey had made a promise to ratify the Statute after implementing it into national legislation in 2002 and 2004. However, although Rome Statute crimes were included in national legislation, the Statute still re-mains unsigned by Turkey to this day.

We all know that humanity has witnessed some of the wildest crimes throughout history. We shall not allow any government to protect its citizens, when a crime against humanity is committed. We should be able to say that Europe has higher values than to leave human rights to the initiative of abusive and cor-rupted leaders and their self-serving judicial systems.

ICC can be a very effective institution for universal jurisdiction against war crimes and crimes against hu-manity; however the Court is not capable of playing this important role right now. 

Nationals of Member States which have not ratified the Statute are immune to any investigation and prosecution. Since there wasn't a Security Council referral, we could not even expect the Office of the Prosecutor to have jurisdiction over crimes against humanity and war crimes carried out by Turkish law enforcement forces in Kurdish towns.

Moreover, the sad truth is that the leaders and the nationals of NATO member states and their allies will probably never have to answer in an international court for the perpetrations of their military.

We all know that the liberal interventionists’ drive is not safe from political and economic relations. Other-wise, those who branded Slobodan Milosevic as ‘The Butcher of Belgrade’ would also react for Kurds in Turkey and folks in Syria and Iraq who witnessed war crimes.

If the ICC Office of the Prosecutor was to investigate crimes against humanity in war of Syria, I really won-der who is going to take responsibility. Will those who mistreated the refugees, those who supplied war weapons or those who smuggled oil, also be held responsible for the crimes they committed?

The need to strengthen an independent judicial institution is urgent. However we should assure that this court has the power to work independently. Otherwise, politically motivated war crime indictments will have no benefit to humanity but covering the crime itself.

Finally I would like to reemphasize the importance of the call to action made in the report, invite Member States to ratify the Statute which have not yet done so, and I ask all Member States to ratify the “Kampala amendments”. 


Filiz Kerestecioğlu, Member of Parliament, Turkey

October 12, 2016