Turkey

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Thursday 7th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am used to being the last to be called, so I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak at this stage of the debate.

I thank the right hon. Member for Enfield North (Joan Ryan) for asking me to join the deputation to the Backbench Business Committee that applied for the debate—I was very pleased to do so. I congratulate right hon. and hon. Members on their magnificent contributions on a subject in which I take a great interest.

This is a timely debate, given Turkey’s forthcoming parliamentary and presidential elections. As the right hon. Lady and others have rightly said, they are taking place when a state of special control is in place across the nation. As chair of the all-party group for international freedom of religion or belief—FORB, as it is better known—I am deeply worried about developments in Turkey in respect of freedom of religion and belief, as well as the associated freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly.

I am pleased to see the shadow Minister and Minister in the Chamber because both of them are well versed in this matter. I hope that both their contributions will effectively bring together all our points of view. I want to discuss some of the vital issues of concern, particularly the crackdown on human rights and civil society in Turkey that followed the 2016 coup attempt. I shall then move on to the specific restrictions on the right to FORB.

I was trying to think of an analogy that might sum up Turkey. As a country sports enthusiast, I came up with this: it runs with the hare and hunts with the hounds. Turkey fraternises with the USA and NATO, and also Russia and Syria, and it seems to play one off against the other. The situation worries me greatly. We have a nation that seems to be finding its own way and is perhaps becoming a big player—if it has its own way—but we must remember that it has been an ally in the past and is an ally within NATO as well.

The Turkish Government’s response to the 2016 coup attempt significantly damaged Turkey’s human rights protection framework and tightened that Government’s control over all aspects of Turkish society, as the right hon. Member for Enfield North and others mentioned. In the aftermath of the coup, the Turkish Government dismissed some 150,000 public servants from their jobs—their only crime was that they had a different opinion from that of President Erdoğan. Disgracefully, more than 1,200 schools were also shut down in a blatant, concerted attack on education and opportunity for children young and old. Some 15 universities and 185 media outlets were also shut down, and 73 journalists were arrested, with a further 250 Turkish journalists having to flee the country for fear of arrest and persecution. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Turkey arrested the highest number of journalists of any country in 2017. There has been a significant clampdown on media expression. When authorities control the media in the way that Turkey’s do, they control what happens and what people hear across the entire country. The independence of academics in Turkey has also been curtailed greatly after the attempted coup; over 6,500 academics lost their positions and hundreds of them were imprisoned.

Those people would all have expressed concern about Turkey’s human rights abuses. If this debate were happening in Turkey, each one of us in this Chamber would have been arrested and put in jail—we would not be able to express ourselves as we have done. We are taking the opportunity in this House, in the seat of democracy, to express ourselves on behalf of those in Turkey who do not have that right—politicians and those involved in political parties who are sitting in prison and do not have the right to express themselves. They cannot conduct election campaigns, knock on doors or speak to people.

As well as these other groups, many human rights defenders have been arrested and charged with membership of terrorist organisations, including the head of Amnesty International in Turkey. This has had a chilling effect on human rights and religious freedom advocates working in the country. According to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, in this environment, many religious minority groups have maintained a low profile and have largely ceased pursuing their previous long-standing demands for fear of being arrested or put in prison, so they cannot even express themselves in the way they have before because they are restricted.

Of course, the Turkish Government justify their crackdown on human rights and the unjust jailing of thousands of public officials, academics, journalists, politicians and human rights defenders by saying that is necessary to fight terrorism. I agree that they have been on our side in fighting terrorism, but they cannot use the same rules to clamp down on their own citizens and to restrict the rights and freedoms they had beforehand. Unfortunately, such disregard for a country’s own citizens is often counterproductive. As we have heard, history shows that those countries that do such a thing will feel the wrath of the people at some point, and I think Turkey’s day is coming—it will not just be turkeys for Christmas; it will be Turkey’s day for other reasons. That is because the public’s willingness to co-operate with authorities to combat terrorism can be lost if their human rights are violated by those same authorities. Moreover, human rights violations can create the grievances that drive people to take up arms against the state, so Turkey needs to be very careful about what it is doing internally.

The second issue I would like to discuss is the FORB situation in Turkey specifically. There is simply not enough time to go through all the freedom of belief issues in Turkey that cause me and the all-party group significant concern. Funding for non-Muslim houses of worship remains very limited in comparison with funding for Sunni mosques. Anti-Semitism continues to be a problem for Turkey’s Jewish community, and there are significant reports of Protestant churches being vandalised and pastors being targeted with hate speech via text message, Facebook and email. We have brought those issues to the House in the past.

The European Court of Human Rights has made many judgments on these and other long-standing issues, which have not been addressed by the Turkish Government. Those issues include the right to conscientious objection to military service—meaning that those who do not want to serve would have the opportunity to say no—and the right to raise one’s children in line with one’s religious or philosophical views. Is that wrong? It seems to be in Turkey. They also include the right to establish places of worship—when people want to establish or build a church, whether a house church or a physical church, they are denied that right—and the right not to disclose one’s religious beliefs. In the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief, which I chair, we speak up for those with Christian beliefs, with other beliefs and with no beliefs. In other words, we speak for all those people in Turkey whose freedoms are being denied.

Other fundamental issues include the difficulty that religious communities face in providing formal religious education and training for their clergy and followers, and the impossibility of their obtaining independent legal status. Independent legal status for churches and their related educational institutions is totally restricted in Turkey. Even the Sunni Muslim community is not allowed to be independent from the state. It is controlled by the Diyanet, which is part of the Prime Minister’s office. This is another example of an autocrat taking control over everything that happens in Turkey, and it is something about which I and other Members here have spoken out strongly. These issues have been extensively documented by human rights organisations such as the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, the Freedom of Belief Initiative and Forum 18. The United Nations is also concerned about them, but we do not see anything happening. We just see an autocratic leader in President Erdoğan pursuing a singular and blinkered policy to deny people their rights.

Another critical freedom of religion or belief—FORB—issue I would like to discuss is education in Turkey. Primary and secondary school students in Turkey are required to complete the religious culture and moral knowledge course, which is rooted in Islamic principles and which Turkish officials claim is necessary to raise law-abiding and moral Turkish citizens. They deny all the other religions their rights, but they are happy to impose a course that tries to nurture, focus and singularly point towards what they want. In 2014, the European Court of Human Rights held that the course should not be compulsory, as the classes

“do not respect parents’, guardians’, and pupils’ freedom of religion or belief.”

The Government have yet to comply fully with that ruling. Is it not time that they did so? It is it not time that Turkey listened to the United Nations? Is it not time for it to start giving freedoms and rights to its people, just as other countries across the world do?

The situation regarding FORB and education in Turkey is likely to worsen in the coming years, as the curriculum in Turkey’s public schools is set to change in 2018. This will mark another critical and singular change. According to numerous human rights reports, the education ministry has revised more than 170 curriculum topics in an effort to raise what President Erdoğan has called a “pious generation” of Turks—a generation of people who will know nothing other than what the President tells them. What a society that would be if everyone thought the same things, dressed the same way and ate the same things. Imagine how it would be if everyone wore the same uniforms and did the same jobs. What a terrible place that would be.

The ministry will remove evolutionary concepts such as natural selection, and critics claim that lessons on human rights, gender equality and openness towards various lifestyles will also be altered. North Korea will pale into insignificance if President Erdoğan has his way. This is a concerning development for all of us who believe that education should be used not to foster divisiveness but rather to open minds and broaden horizons, to teach respect and love for one another, and to inspire genuine curiosity and the search for truth. That is what education is about. It is about acquiring a vast amount of knowledge in order to advance ourselves and create opportunities.

I am also immensely concerned about how the Turkish Government have treated the Kurds. Their situation is totally unacceptable, and I hope that the United Nations will—[Interruption.] Okay, Madam Deputy Speaker, I am coming to the end of my speech. I shall sum up.

Since the 2016 coup attempt, the Turkish Government have been systematically attacking civil society and trying to replace it. They have created a new media, a new deep state, a new code of conduct based on nepotism and a system that revolves around one man, in which the violation of Turkey’s international human rights obligations is worryingly commonplace, unquestionable and unjustifiably arbitrary. Thousands of Turkish citizens have been imprisoned, including many who have stood up for the rights of their countrymen and women.

FORB in Turkey has also been on a downward trajectory. The proposed changes in the educational curriculum and the failure to implement many of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights ensure that Turkish religious or belief groups will continue to have their article 18 right to FORB denied. I call on the British Government to publicly and privately urge the Turkish Government to implement their binding international human rights obligations. If those obligations are met, Turkish people will be free to make their own choices about their own society, in regard not only to elections but to the exercise of their rights to the freedoms of religion and belief, expression, association and peaceful assembly. If that happens, Turkey can be part of a vision for the world; if it does not, it will be going backwards, and we have to make sure that it cannot do that.