The European Council will decide whether to deliver on the European Union’s past promise of a “positive agenda” with Turkey, and maybe even upgrade trade relations between the two. But such talk jars, given that human rights are absent from the proposed dialogue.
After being held at arm’s length for several years, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is to meet with Western leaders. The European Union is due to evaluate relations with Turkey at a summit on June 24-25 in Brussels.
The EU is looking to forge a new agreement with Erdogan while he continues to jail his political opponents; threatens to close down the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP); arrests student protesters; withdraws from the Istanbul Convention; and ignores verdicts of the European Court of Human Rights on such high-profile cases as the imprisonment of civil society leader Osman Kavala and imprisonment of Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtas.
Erdogan’s efforts to silence the opposition have accelerated this week, when the Turkish Constitutional Court accepted an indictment seeking the closure of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Turkey’s third largest political force. The ruling may ban hundreds of HDP members from political office and puts a freeze on the party’s bank accounts.
The European Union should demand improvements in Turkey’s democracy as a condition of meeting a Turkish request to further trade ties, said Kati Piri, a former European Parliament rapporteur on Turkey and a member of the Dutch parliament.
“Offering better trade conditions to Turkey without any conditions on democratic reforms would be a real waste of the strongest card the EU has,” Piri said in an article published by the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Philippe Dam, advocacy director for Human Rights Watch Europe and Central Asia division, has called on EU officials to send a clear message to Turkey when they meet for the EU summit this week about the “deplorable” human rights situation in Turkey.
Analysts believe the upcoming summit risks bolstering the Turkish president’s position, as Brussels has shown itself to be unwilling to use its economic muscle to get Erdogan to change his behavior.
Erdogan will instead conclude that his intensified clampdown on the opposition poses no obstacle to better relations with Brussels. It is also a slap in the face to imprisoned journalists and arrested politicians, analysts argued.
Wide range of human rights violations are taking place in Turkey such as the imprisonment of scores of journalists, a “relentless” crackdown on free speech targeting people for social media posts, the jailing of expelled Turkish Parliament member Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, a closure case against the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and a separate show trial against dozens of its politicians.
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