EU expresses deep concern over repression in Turkey

The European Union (EU) has expressed "serious concern" about the repression and persecution against the opposition and academic sectors carried out by the Turkish government led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan. 

On Thursday, the EU demanded the immediate release of students detained in the Eurasian country in protests against the authoritarian and Islamist drift of the Turkish Executive and against the appointment of Melih Bulut, who is very close to President Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP), as rector of Bosphorus University. The EU said it was "seriously concerned" about the repression and the deterioration of the rule of law in the country, according to a statement by EU diplomacy chief Josep Borrell. 

"The European Union is seriously concerned over the negative developments in Turkey in the areas of the rule of law, human rights and the judiciary", Borrell said in a press release. "We call on Turkey to respect its national and international obligations and to release those arbitrarily detained for exercising their right to peaceful assembly over the last weeks," he added.

Relations between the EU and Turkey have been strained since last year. EU leaders have taken note of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's desire for normalisation, but called for "credible gestures" and "lasting efforts" to be discussed at a European summit on 25-26 March.

Borrell denounced the detention of more than 100 students arrested while "exercising their right to peaceful assembly" and the Istanbul governor's decision "to ban all kinds of meetings, demonstrations and marches" in districts of the major Ottoman city.  

During the protests on Monday and Tuesday, police detained at least 230 people, most of them students, according to eyewitnesses. Security forces dispersed the students from inside the university campus, and also did not allow students to come and stand in solidarity with their fellow students and assaulted them. Demonstrators confronted the police, chanting slogans such as "Let the police leave" and "The universities are ours". They denounced the arbitrary election of Bulut without holding elections in the first place.  

The student movement is being strong against the attempts of Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government to increase the control over the universities. 

Protests by professors and students against Bulut have taken place in front of the Bosphorus University rectorate almost every day since January 4, with occasional events in other Istanbul neighbourhoods. 

"Istanbul governor’s decision to ban all kinds of meetings, demonstrations and marches in two districts covering the hinterland of the Boğaziçi university is a deeply worrying development, and goes against the authorities’ stated commitment to reforms towards EU values and standards," the official EU statement said. 

"The excessive use of force by the police against people using their right to freedom of opinion is contradictory to Turkey’s obligations as a candidate country and long-standing member of the Council of Europe," the official note added.  

Recep Tayyip Erdogan's persecution of opponents, mainly people close to the Republican People's Party (CHP), which wrested power in the major cities of Istanbul and Ankara from Erdogan's AKP in the last municipal elections, and the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP), accused by the government of supporting the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is accused by the government of allegedly supporting terrorist acts in the south of the Eurasian country, continues. The CHP itself provided lawyers for university students arrested in recent protests. 

Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues to increase pressure on the opposition in the face of the political crisis his party is suffering due to the loss of support in the interior of the country, represented above all by the heavy defeat in the last municipal elections and the weariness of a certain part of the population, especially young people, in the face of the authoritarian and radical Islamist policies of the Executive and the difficult economic situation the country is suffering.

The European Union took a stance on the punishment of the Russian opposition leader Navalny, along with criticism of Recep Tayyip Erdogan's repression in Turkey, and described it as "unacceptable" because the sanction is limited to "political reasons"; thus demanding his "immediate and unconditional" release.  Josep Borrell, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Policy, expressed his absolute disagreement with the sentence: "It goes against Russia's international human rights obligations".

The former Spanish Foreign Minister travelled last day to meet with Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, and other officials of the Putin administration, among other things to discuss Navalny's detention. The visit has already made headlines. Russia has compared the opposition leader's situation to that of the Catalan politicians in Spain: "The Catalan pro-independence leaders are in prison for organising a referendum, a decision that the Spanish justice system has not overturned despite the fact that courts in Germany and Belgium have ruled against it", said Lavrov himself in a critical response to Josep Borrell's postulates.