Our vice co-Chair Mr. Hisyar Özsoy gave today a speech on behalf of the UEL group at the Current Affairs Debate on Turkey of Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
In his speech Mr. Özsoy stated following:
The question is not whether Turkey has the right to struggle against the coup attempt, but how that struggle should be waged.
Initially there was consensus among four political parties at the parliament; we all took a clear stance against the coup. The coup attempt could have been used as an opportunity to democratize Turkish society and politics, but the government chose otherwise and put into practice a counter coup to reshape Turkey according to ambitious wishes of president Erdogan.
On Monday Commissioner Muezniks share his findings about Turkey, detailing grave violations of fundamental rights and freedoms. Yesterday, Turkish minister of foreign affairs talked about the situation in Turkey, depicting a generally cozy picture, “with small problems here and there.” There are quite stark disagreements between what the Council’s commissioner and the Turkish minister said.
The government declared emergency rule with the promise of purging the Gulen community from state institutions. Yesterday the Turkish minister said at this room that no other citizen was negatively impacted. But that is simply not true.
Universities, the courts, the media, local governments, civil society, commercial firms and companies, and oppositional political parties are under tremendous repression. And there is absolutely no separation of powers, no rule of law, no impartiality of the courts, and no Constitutional rule in the country.
So far at least 130,000 civil servants were dismissed or suspended. More than 11 thousand Kurdish teachers were dismissed or suspended without any legal basis.
More than 3000 judges and prosecutors were dismissed and replaced overnight.
Hundreds of media outlets were banned without court decisions. Most recently 23 mostly Kurdish and Alevi media outlets were closed, even Zarok TV, a channel broadcasting cartoons for Kurdish children. The number of journalists in prison increased from 30 to 120 in the last two months.
More than 60 elected Kurdish mayors were dismissed and/or arrested and at least 25 of them replaced by trustees appointed by the central government.
Only in the last two days 180 HDP executives were detained. The police raided all the offices of HDP in Diyarbakir last night. The witch-hunt is continuing full force.
When the coup attempt happened, President Erdogan himself said “it was God’s gift.” The naked fact is that he is using the coup attempt as an excuse and opportunity to silence all oppositional voices in the country, first and foremost our party, the HDP. In early September there was a striking shift in the focus and scope of the crackdown, since then the HDP, Kurdish, Alevi or other oppositional forces and critical media became key targets. The government is justifying its repression with the pretext of fighting terror. The reality is that in the name of fighting terror, the government is terrorizing the society, producing a climate of fear, chaos and insecurity with which to rule the country and consolidate Erdogan’s one-man rule.
Hisyar Ozsoy, Member of Parliament, Turkey
October 13, 2015