Our İstanbul MP Ms. Filiz Kerestecioğlu's speech at the spring session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe:
Mr President, dear colleagues,
First of all, I would like to thank the rapporteurs for preparing this important report with great enthusiasm. I suppose they've taken on a tougher task than any of your monitoring rapporteurs did. After all, declaring an opinion criticizing the Turkish government today means being targeted by the Turkish government authorities and initiating a smear campaign against you. The same thing happened to many of our colleagues who are here with us today.
Turkey has never been in the agenda of the Assembly so far from the day that it is a member of the Council of Europe. Turkey was a country trying to settle Western democracy for a long time. But especially for the last two years, Turkey is no longer the country that we know. Turkey is the country holding the largest numbers of journalists in prison. Moreover the government that holds all the media tools is even trying to find ways to justify it.
It all began with the choice of a war to win elections and open the way to the presidency. The rulers chose "war instead of peace" because they lost elections on June 7th.
After that day, the rulers ignored our 6 million votes and arrested our elected deputies. The policy of destroying the opposition, which has been repeatedly carried out by military coups until now, has been put into practice with the Decree-Laws under the state of emergency, in civilian hands.
Today in Turkey, majority domination is imposed as democracy.
In democracies, however, the judiciary can not be taken over, the separation of powers can not be ignored, freedom of expression can not be abandoned, free media can not be destroyed, civil society can not be conquered, democratic values can not be touched.
Moreover, it is not possible today to claim that there is a majority in Turkey supporting Erdogan!
As stated in the report of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Constitutional amendment found only 51% support in Turkey, even after a very unfair campaign process and a very seriously controversial referendum.
In fact, the fact that Europe does not fulfill its responsibilities due to military and commercial concerns and refugee treaties to date is one of the factors which cause Turkish citizens to be exposed to more serious human rights violations and feel alone.
In fact, the fact that Europe does not fulfill its responsibilities due to military and commercial concerns and refugee treaties to date is one of the factors which cause Turkish citizens to be exposed to more serious human rights violations and feel alone.
As stated in the report, monitoring of developments in Turkey needs to be intensified and broadened in order to protect the rights of Turkish citizens against despotic governance and to ensure that military coups do not happen again in Turkey.
Reopening the monitoring procedure in respect of Turkey is the only way for the Council of Europe to fulfill its duty to protect the future of our beloved country.
25 April 2017