Your trusted source

Member of the Armenian delegation to PACE, MP Samvel Farmanyan spoke of the democracy in Turkey today during the discussion entitled “Situation in Turkey in the light of the attempted coup d’Etat”

“Turkish democracy has been challenged again on July 15,” Farmanyan stated, referring to the failed military coup attempt in Turkey.

“Overthrowing a democratically elected government through military coup is a devil to any democracy and the Turkish people were wise enough to save the germs of democracy decisively,” Farmanyan said, adding: “However, what happened in Turkey after that is clear drawback from its democratic track, and can be even called as counter coup d’Etat - widespread arrests, illegal punishments, extended detentions, and mistreatment of thousands of suspects, including journalists and intellectuals, crackdown of the media and civil society, which halt in all state institutions across the country, the prolonged state of emergence regime, etc.” stressed the Armenian MP pointing out to the much spoken reintroduction of the death penalty in the Turkish Constitution as another troubling example sign.   

“It could be even argued that there is no much difference what the perpetrators of the military coup did in 1980 and what Erdogan has carried out recently. News coming from Turkey reminds me the horror and nightmare of the Stalin era. Millions of people living in even remote villages of Soviet Union were officially accused to be agents of the so-called agents of the western imperialism and were jailed or killed.  Today Erdogan tried to emulate Stalin putting Gulen movement instead of Western imperialism. Thousands of people are accused of being a part to the so-called Gulen movement, while no one frames it clearly what it is about and how it could be possible for hundreds of thousand people to join this movement in a country where almost everything seems to be controlled by state institutions,” Farmanyan stressed.

“Whatever Foreign Minister Cavushoglu said yesterday the situation behind the curtains in Turkey is quite obvious Erdogan is trying to consolidate more power in his hands building an unprecedented autocratic regime and the changes to the constitution is another proof of that intention. Moreover, increasing engagement in Syria, manipulation over the fight against the terrorist organizations within and outside of Turkey, challenging Lausanne treaty, unwillingness to de-blockade the illegally crossed border with Armenia and the powerful support to Azerbaijan in Nagorno Karabakh peace process are clear signs of Erdogan’s increasing neo-ottoman ambitions  - putting in parallel millions of Syrian refugees to be political hostages in the hands of Erdogan to blackmail Europe, “ Farmanyan noted.

The MP next suggested that the discussions of Turkey’s democracy today mean discussion of the security in tomorrow’s Europe and in its neighborhood.
“We are a political body and our response should be political. What else Erdogan should di to push us to put Turkey back on monitoring track?” Farmanyan concluded.