Türkei: Beispielloser Angriff auf Menschenrechte

Mit deutlichen Worten reagiert Human Right Watch auf jüngste Entwicklungen in der Türkei:

The Turkish government has been “dismantling human rights protections and democratic norms” on an unprecedented scale over the past 18 years, said an international human rights watchdog on Wednesday.

“President Erdogan is targeting any institution or part of society that stands in the way of his wide-ranging effort to reshape Turkey’s society,” executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) Kenneth Roth said in a report on Wednesday. 

“The latest developments against parliamentary opposition, the Kurds, and women are all about ensuring the president’s hold on power in violation of human rights and democratic safeguards,” he added.

Ankara on Saturday withdrew from the Istanbul Convention, a treaty combatting violence against women,  just days after Turkey’s top prosecutor filed an indictment to ban the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).   

Turkish parliament stripped the HDP’s Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu of his parliamentary membership on March 17 for a tweet he made in 2016, after being sentenced to two years and a half in prison in 2018. The country’s police detained the MP in a raid early Sunday morning, only to be released later in the day. 

HRW said that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decision to withdraw from the Istanbul convention shows the president’s willingness to “use the convention as a pretext to promote a highly divisive and homophobic political discourse.”