Modern Turkey is turning into the Turkey of the Ottoman era, Armenian National Assembly (NA) Vice President Hermine Naghdalyan said at the Plenary Meeting of PACE Summer Session Wednesday during her speech on the report entitled “The Functioning of Democratic Institutions in Turkey,” strongly condemning the democratic situation in Turkey.
Thanking rapporteurs Ms Godskesen and Ms Vučković for the considerable work done on the report and its comprehensive nature, Ms Naghdalyan noted noted that the document highlights all those serious concerns that Turkey should address without further delay. This report, according to her, clearly indicates the lack of large-scale democratic institutions in Turkey.
Amongst numerous problems and serious violations in the fields of rule of law, legislation, judiciary, relations between communities, the report also makes a particular reference to the restrictions of the freedom of expression and media, political influence on media, as well as prosecution of investigative journalists, academicians and ordinary citizens.
“Any attempt to deliver true information that differs from the official position is persecuted and oppressed in Turkey. One of the first victims of this oppressive policy was Hrant Dink, a prominent Turkish journalist of Armenian descent, who was cynically killed in Istanbul in 2007. Dink had raised the issue of the Armenian genocide; he advocated reconciliation between Turkish and Armenian society and struggled for human dignity and freedoms in his country of Turkey,” Hermine Naghdalyan noted.
The NA Vice President expressed concern on and drew her European colleagues’ attention to the bill passed on 20 May by the Turkish Parliament, which allows to bring criminal charges against legislators.
“The new law is aimed at the lawmakers of the Turkish Opposition. Our Opposition colleagues in Turkey are in real danger. I remind the Assembly that the first victims in 1915 were members of the Turkish Parliament of Armenian origin. Let us prevent the repetition of history,” Ms Naghdalyan added.
Expressing gratitude to the German MPs for the adoption of the recent resolution on the Armenian Genocide by the German Bundestag, Naghdalyan noted that that document caused a storm of indignation among the Turkish authorities.
According to her, the German legislators faced unprecendented display of hate speech and intimidation. The resolution’s initiators received anonymous death threats, and some have been placed under police protection. President Erdoğan demanded blood tests for German MPs of Turkish origin. As the President of the German Bundestag noted, the era of defining people by blood ended in 1945; “Unfortunately not in Turkey, Mr Lammert,” Hermine Naghdalyan concluded.
In her speech Hermine Naghdalyan also touched on the problem of the preservation of cultural heritage.
“I cannot ignore the problem of the preservation of cultural heritage. Thousands of Armenian cultural and spiritual monuments in the territory of modern Turkey are being deliberately destroyed under a planned Turkish Government policy for the elimination of material testimony of Armenian culture. The Genocide of 1915 is continuing today in the form of cultural genocide. Modern Turkey is becoming the Turkey of the Ottoman era, and the direct heir of the values of that empire,” Hermine Naghdalyan stressed in her address, calling on the European parliamentarians to launch monitoring process in Turkey, first of all, to the benefit of that country.
