During his speech to the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly (PACE) in Strasbourg on Wednesday 12 October, Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu aimed to resolve a misunderstanding.
Talking about the attempted coup in Turkey on 15 July, he said it had been a genuine trauma for Turks, who saw arms paid for by taxpayers being used against them, who saw the parliament the presidential being bombed, and tanks firing on people. He basically said that it had not been possible for people in Europe to understand how Turkish people had responded.
The minister said the rule of law was backed by more than 80% of the population. During his discussion with PACE, the minister raised the question of restoring the death penalty, which had been mooted by Turkey's President Erdoğan last year. He said he himself opposed the idea, but his wife had told him she would be angry if he expressed his opposition in public because she was now in favour of the death penalty. He said it took him two days to convince his wife and daughter otherwise, adding that he wanted this personal and unexpected example to give an idea of the scale of the trauma. It takes time to consider things calmly, he said.
The choice of making use of Article 15 of the European Convention of Human Rights to derogate from rights it guarantees was forced on the country by particularly difficult circumstances, Çavuşoğlu stated. He pointed out that France had done the same after the terror attacks in Paris in January and November 2015 but Turkey has suffered more than ten attacks in a year and had only activated the Article 15 derogation after the attempted coup. He added that the Gulen organisation was clearly behind the attempted coup and has infiltrated all the country’s institutions. Some of the people arrested were not part of the plot but were connected with the terror group. He said an end had to be put to that, and Turkey had never before faced such a complicated situation. Turks do not believe the danger has gone and it is the government’s responsibility to take measures within respect of the constitution. He said everyone can examine the appeals, that 3,000 people have been able to return to their jobs because it is true that errors have been made.
However, the Turkish politician added, if progress can be made over the next three months, then the state of emergency will be ended. A decision is demanded in a memorandum by the Council of Europe (CoE) Human Rights Commissioner that was published last week and Çavuşoğlu promised at an earlier press conference to study it carefully. He said that Turkey would give its agreement to publication of the latest report drawn up by the CoE’s committee on preventing torture and degrading treatment.
The foreign minister said that Turkey, which chaired PACE from 2010 to 2012, wanted to reassure the audience about the government’s desire to continue working with the CoE through its expert groups and the European Commission for Democracy by Law, known as the Venice Commission, a CoE advisory body. He said this would apply and in fact he had already said the same thing on 10 September in a meeting with CoE Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland, and Estonia’s foreign minister (Estonia currently chairs the Committee of Ministers).
Visas. Asked about the visa liberalisation plans that are weighing on EU-Turkey relations, Çavuşoğlu said that Turkey had respected all the agreement on illegal immigration, but its own expectations had not been met. He said the terrorist backdrop meant it was not possible to subscribe to the 72 criteria that have been laid down, and the process was difficult but he hoped a roadmap could be achieved – arguing in passing for freedom of expression for Erdoğan, who sometimes speaks his mind and is too sincere, but speaks the truth when he says the situation is unfair.
Returning to the question of press freedom at the end of his talk with PACE, Çavuşoğlu said the journalists that have been arrested were not arrested because they were journalists. He said this was a great misunderstanding and said other people were looking in at Turkey from the outside. While he respected their freedom of expression, when they talk like that, the Turkish population has the impression that they are on the side of the putschists, he said. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)