The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN) and the Human Rights Association (IHD) express their utmost concern over the repression of the social movement currently unfolding in Turkey.
Violent repression and use of excessive force by police forces are blatant breaches in the right to peaceful assembly.
Democracy is not only about exercising the right to vote: it implies that debate can take place within society without the State responding to it with violence.
In this context, or under the pretense of fighting terrorism, scholars, lawyers, journalists, trade unionists and human rights defenders are now being prosecuted and some of them are remanded in detention. Freedom of expression is being threatened by a government displaying increasing authoritarian trends.
The EMHRN and the IHD call on the Turkish government to lend an ear to protesters’ claims, and even more so when they demand respect to their individual and collective freedoms, in particular their right to free speech and free opinion.
Freedom of peaceful assembly and demonstration must be guaranteed.
We ask that police forces stop using disproportionate force and that impartial and independent investigation be carried out and sanctions taken against who is responsible for police violence.
We demand that all peaceful protesters detained be released, and that the Turkish government abide by the Convention against Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading Treatment or punishment, as well as by the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights that protects freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.
The EMHRN and the IHD call on the European Union and its member States to pressure the Turkish government to implement international conventions it has ratified.