Civil Society Space
Debate between Natalie McGarry and Patrick Grady(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Natalie McGarry (Glasgow East) (Ind)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I congratulate the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), who we will hear from later, for securing this debate through the Backbench Business Committee.
I will concentrate on Turkey today. I want to talk about the erosion of civil liberties in that country—one of our most pervasive issues in the EU, particularly because Turkey is on our borders. We do not hear enough about Turkey in the UK media; it seems to be the truth that dares not speak its name.
This debate is especially pertinent at the moment, given that this is a time of great uncertainty. Even in the country that calls itself the leader of the free world, six journalists have been charged with rioting for reporting what happened on President Trump’s inauguration day. America, in President Trump’s tiny hands, faces a very uncertain future. With that as a background, what is happening in Turkey—especially given America’s relations with Turkey—is particularly important.
Turkey should be important to everybody, but it is personally important to me. In the last year, I have travelled there and seen for myself the erosion of civil liberties. Even before the coup, I met representatives of organisations that were already suffering from the crackdown on civil space and the shutting down of organisations in the country.
Indeed, I went to visit Sur, in Diyarbakir, to see what was happening to the Kurdish populace and also to areas such as Cizre and Surnak. I was detained by the Turkish forces for taking a picture of the bombardment. It might have been naive to take a picture of what is a military procedure, but I did it because I had been told by media organisations in this country that the reason why they did not report what was happening to the Kurdish populations in those areas was that they did not have any evidence of what was happening. They needed some reliable testimony, and they would not take it from any of the actors involved. Given that the Turkish state had expelled journalists and prevented them from going into these areas to report on them, we were getting very little from those areas.
This is not about me, but I will say that that experience was the most terrifying of my life. I was dragged off a street behind the demarcation line and taken into a shack filled with guns and people who did not speak any English. I was refused a translator. As I say, it was terrifying. I am in the very fortunate position of being a Member of Parliament: using Google translate, we managed to get that message across to my captors, and the consulate and the embassy did stellar work to get me released. But I am a British Member of Parliament—
