Turkey: Human Rights and the Political Situation

Ann Clwyd Excerpts

Thursday 9th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

Last time I was in Turkey, it was to try to get some HDP prisoners out of jail. A Member of the Swiss Parliament and I were asked to go there by the Inter-Parliamentary Union. I am a member of its human rights committee, and we deal with the human rights of parliamentarians. We went to Turkey to try to get the HDP members out of jail, but luckily, a few days before we got there, they had all been released. However, I believe that many of them are now in jail again.

Some years before that, when I was a Member of the European Parliament, some of my colleagues and I tried to get members of the Peace Association of Turkey—the equivalent of the CND in this country—out of jail. I went to Metris prison, where they were being tried at the time in very bad circumstances. Of course, that was under military dictatorship. Eventually most of them were released, but only after they had gone through a particularly difficult time. When Leyla Zana was imprisoned some years before, the Turkish authorities allowed me to spend some time with her in prison. I talked to her about why she was there and what stand she was making, and she is a very principled person.

There is now imprisonment of MPs in Turkey once again; it is believed that about 15 of them are in jail. The HDP—the Peoples’ Democratic party—is a legitimate Turkish opposition party working for a pluralist Turkey. It advocates greater rights for Turkey’s ethnic minorities and increased autonomy for the majority Kurdish south-east of the country, but not an independent state. The two co-chairs have already been mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Joan Ryan), and many other HDP lawmakers were detained in November. The co-chairs remain in prison on terrorism-related charges, and I understand that they face a total of 180 years in jail if found guilty on all charges.

I consider myself a friend of Turkey, but also a critic. Some of my good friends live in Turkey and I visit it fairly regularly, but four of my friends are now exiled in Wales. Two of them are actors, one is a designer and the other is a writer. They are all Turks, and very well-known Turks—one was the most important male actor in Turkey. The reason they are in exile is that Erdogan denounced them twice at a rally, pointed at the man in question and shouted, “He’s a traitor to Turkey. He should be killed.” That happened twice. In the Turkey of the moment, the best thing they could do was obviously to leave the country. They have had to leave their friends, relatives and careers and get out of the country because they are so afraid.

I know that my friends in Turkey—academics, journalists, writers—are also afraid, because they do not know who is going to be imprisoned and caught up next. They are in a dreadful situation. We have to keep highlighting that and, in particular, the attacks on the media. As my right hon. and hon. Friends have mentioned, so many journalists are in jail, and many of them have not been charged but are waiting for charges. Some 170 media organisations have been shut down since the coup. There have been physical attacks and threats against journalists, and Government pressure on the media to fire critical journalists and cancel their press accreditation. As has been said, the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression concluded after his visit in November:

“Across the board, the Government is imposing draconian measures that limit freedom of expression”.

As others have said, the rule of law is being seriously eroded. More than one fifth of Turkey’s judiciary has been removed, and the Government have consolidated their control over the courts. More than 100,000 civil servants, including teachers, judges and prosecutors, have been dismissed or detained without due process. Many detainees are placed in pre-trial detention despite a lack of evidence.

I look to the Minister and ask what the UK Government’s policy is on Turkey in light of the deteriorating situation and the fact that Erdogan is accumulating more and more power for himself. Are we simply going to turn a blind eye or, even worse, increase arms sales at a time when there is a real risk that those arms will ultimately be used by the Turkish Government against their own population? The international community, including the UK, who are true friends of Turkey, need to focus on helping to restart the peace process between the Turkish Government and the Kurds. The conflict between the two has plagued Turkey for years, and following the collapse of the peace talks in 2015 the situation in the south-east, which I have been to several times, has deteriorated significantly. It is time to try to bring this conflict to an end with a viable political solution. Addressing that problem could set Turkey down a different path—a path of security, prosperity and harmony so that Turkey, again, would be a beacon in the region and in the world.