Turkey does not have a good record for upholding civil rights and liberties of its citizens. Large number of rulings against it at the European Court of Human Rights is a good indication of the existing legal and political environment.<\/p>\n
The constitutional guarantee of due process of law is not always applied fairly and equally to all people.<\/p>\n
With its membership bid faltered, Turkey no longer looks to the EU for a roadmap. Bringing the country\u2019s legislation into line with the EU standards and values has become more of an impossible dream than a faint hope by now.<\/p>\n
When it comes to maintaining the balance between upholding civil liberties and national security, scales of justice have always tipped towards state security over individual liberty in Turkey.\u00a0 In recent years, increasingly arbitrary rule of the Justice and Development Party government, its disregard for separation of powers, checks and balances and rule of the law together with its excessive pressure on the media, have dealt a massive blow to country\u2019s democratic credentials.<\/p>\n
Yet, with a series of amendments in recent months and a new security bill about to be submitted to the Parliament, we are now facing altogether a more sinister situation.<\/p>\n
The government\u2019s proposed legislative changes, due to be debated next Tuesday, introduces alarming new measures \u00a0such as expanding police powers to search and detain suspects with a lower threshold of evidence, \u00a0increasing the length of time to detain people without a court order and a considerable amount of immunity and protection for security forces from prosecution. It also gives politically appointed provincial governors and ministers greater authority to suspend the law.<\/p>\n
So much so, all three opposition parties agree that the draft bill would transform Turkey into a police state.<\/p>\n
The leader of the main opposition Republican People\u2019s Party (CHP) Kemal K\u0131l\u0131\u00e7daro\u011flu says that the government is dragging the country back to days of the military regime after the 1980 military coup.<\/p>\n
The leader of The Nationalist Movement Party, Devlet Bahceli believes that the President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan wants a police state of his own.<\/p>\n
The leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Selahattin Demirtas has called on the other two opposition parties to act together to challenge the bill.<\/p>\n
Proposed changes take the concept of \u201cprotecting the state interest over the rights of a citizen\u201d one step further. It broadens the basis of regime support, introducing guarantees of immunity from prosecution, not only for the President and his immediate circle but also for a select group of regime insiders that facilitate his arbitrary rule.<\/p>\n
Turkish Interior Minister Efkan Ala claims that the polls show 80% of the public support the draft security bill.<\/p>\n
If he were to be proven right, the debate in Turkey would no longer be whether the state actors should have immunity and protection; but how deeply the culture of entrenched impunity in the country has already become.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Turkey does not have a good record for upholding civil rights and liberties of its citizens. Large number of rulings against it at the European Court of Human Rights is a good indication of the existing legal and political environment. The constitutional guarantee of due process of law is not always applied fairly and equally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27583"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27585,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27583\/revisions\/27585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}