{"id":28955,"date":"2017-03-29T13:05:35","date_gmt":"2017-03-29T13:05:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/?p=28955"},"modified":"2017-03-29T13:05:35","modified_gmt":"2017-03-29T13:05:35","slug":"turkey-uk-ties-under-spotlight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/turkey-uk-ties-under-spotlight\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey-UK ties under spotlight"},"content":{"rendered":"
The UK Foreign Affairs Committee\u2019s<\/a> long-awaited report on relations with Turkey finally came out last week. <\/span><\/p>\n Select Committees in both the House of Commons and in the House of Lords, provide powerful oversights on the work of government departments and policies. By holding government to account and making the results of their inquiries public, they are prime examples of democracy at work.<\/span><\/p>\n The Foreign Affairs Committee, which is appointed by the House of Commons, is made up of 11 backbench opposition and governing party Members of Parliament. <\/span><\/p>\n The Committee examining bilateral relations between the UK and Turkey was chaired by the Conservative MP Crispin Blunt. He launched the inquiry on 21 July 2016. Its remit was to focus on rights and freedoms as well as Turkish foreign and security policies and their relevance to the UK. <\/span><\/p>\n The Committee invited written submissions and witnesses for oral evidence, addressing issues such as the situation in Turkey regarding the status of democracy and rights, Turkey\u2019s foreign policy in the Middle East and its relations with the UK, European Union and NATO. <\/span><\/p>\n It received written evidence from 32 persons or organisations, including from the Turkish Embassy<\/a> , the Gulenist Centre for Hizmet Studies organisation<\/span>,<\/a>\u00a0the Peoples Democratic Party (HDP<\/a>), Republican Peoples Party (CHP<\/a>), various civil society organisations and individuals with Turkey expertise. <\/span><\/p>\n For oral evidence and questioning the invitees included Sir Alan Duncan MP (Minister of State for Europe and the Americas), Lindsay Appleby (Director, Europe, Foreign and Commonwealth Office), Dr Y\u00fcksel Alp Aslando\u011fan (Executive Director, Alliance for Shared Values), \u00d6zcan Kele\u015f (Chairman, the Dialogue Society), Ertu\u011frul K\u00fcrk\u00e7\u00fc, (MP, Honorary President of the HDP), and the academics Professor William Hale, Professor Rosemary Hollis, Ziya Meral and Bill Park. Their long testaments and all associated correspondence can be found here<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n