Reacting on 16 December to the first instance conviction and the political ban on Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu on Wednesday 14 December, the President of the Council of Europe’s Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, Leendert Verbeek said he was “extremely concerned by this decision”.
This decision “not only violates the rights of Ekrem İmamoğlu himself, but it once again disregards the suffrage expressed by the voters of Istanbul. It is a direct attack on local democracy”. It is “very worrying in terms of the state of democracy in Turkey ”, he added.
The day before, John Howell (EC/DA, British) and Boriss Cilevičs (SOC, Latvian), co-rapporteurs of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on Turkey, said they were “appalled” by “this case, which illustrates once again the restrictive and repressive environment in which opposition members operate in Turkey”, a subject on which the Parliamentary Assembly adopted a resolution during its plenary session last October.
The confirmation of this verdict a few months before national elections would represent “a serious signal about the state of Turkish democracy”, stress the co-rapporteurs, as does Leendert Verbeek.
They “once again urge the Turkish authorities to abolish those provisions of the Penal Code whose abusive use restricts freedom of expression year after year and authorises procedures that amount to judicial harassment of the opposition”, thus “undermining its capacity to contribute to the democratic debate and even to the electoral process”. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)