Turkey: Free Trade Agreement

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Tuesday 27th April 2021 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Sandwich (CB) [V]]

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, and the IAC itself have already pointed out flaws in this agreement: no assessment of the effects on business of a transition from the customs union; no subsidies chapter; and the need to review TBTs and rules of origin.

I shall focus briefly on the absence of human rights. Turkey has a historic role in Europe; some even still see her as a potential member of the EU following the long tradition begun by Atatürk. More recently, President Erdoğan’s repressive Government have made that impossible because of their flagrant abuse of human rights and imprisonment of opposition leaders, activists, journalists and others.

The TUC has called for a suspension of the trade deal and our own IAC has received written evidence from trade unions. According to Unite:

“Over 160,000 judges, teachers, police, and civil servants have been suspended or dismissed, together with about 77,000 formally arrested.”


These figures may be out of date because a lot of prisoners have been released due to the pandemic but the European Commission’s Turkey 2020 Report came down heavily on Ankara, saying that there had been “serious backsliding” on the rule of law and fundamental rights. It mentioned the “deterioration of democracy”, the exclusion of civil society and new problems with refugees. That report may have prompted the recent promises from President Erdoğan to write a new constitution, apparently turning over yet another new leaf. We on the committee were also concerned to hear that Turkey has withdrawn from the Council of Europe convention on violence against women, signed in Istanbul; this issue came up again in our debates on the Domestic Abuse Bill.

Despite all this, human rights and workers’ rights are unspecified in this agreement for some reason, which must be a bad mistake. Our committee report was too polite to insist on a more specific reference; we simply asked the Government to make greater use of the review clause to update the agreement and introduce a full section on human rights.

There seems to be no argument for treating Turkey any differently from other countries with which we have new trade deals—on this, I part company with the previous speaker—and I hope that the Minister will agree that this is a lacuna. Therefore, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, said, we look forward to hearing exactly what the Government’s negotiating objectives are in the new agreement.