Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Se\u00e1n Crowe TD, has called for the immediate release of 11 Peoples\u2019 Democratic Party (HDP) MPs, and the two Co-Chairs of the party, who were arrested by Turkish security forces last night.<\/p>\n
Deputy Crowe said:<\/p>\n
\u201cYesterday, at a meeting of the\u00a0Foreign Affairs Committee in the Irish Parliament, I discussed the deteriorating situation in Turkey with representatives of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). The IFJ outlined the extreme conditions that independent journalists are being forced to work under with the closure of 130 media outlets and the arrests of hundreds of their colleagues.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe arrest of 11 MPs and the two co-chairs of the leftist and pro-Kurdish HDP are another dramatic escalation in the crackdown on democratic politics and civic society in Turkey. The MPs and Co-Chairs were arrested in a series of house raids, while at the same time the headquarters of the HDP was raided by police.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe\u00a0anti-democratic policies of the Turkish government are completely unjust, unacceptable, and pushing the country further along the path to a dictatorship.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe HDP is the third largest party in the Turkish Parliament and the Turkish Government must respect their democratic mandate.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am calling on the Turkish Government to immediately release the 11 MPs and Co-Chairs, to desist from its repressive policies and drop the scurrilous charges against these democratically elected representatives.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will be urgently raising the arrest of these MPs and Co-Chairs with the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs and at the next meeting of the Foreign Affairs Committee.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Se\u00e1n Crowe TD, has called for the immediate release of 11 Peoples\u2019 Democratic Party (HDP) MPs, and the two Co-Chairs of the party, who were arrested by Turkish security forces last night. Deputy Crowe said: \u201cYesterday, at a meeting of the\u00a0Foreign Affairs Committee in the Irish Parliament, I discussed the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[268,50,134,136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hdp","category-human-rights","category-kurds","category-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2884"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2885,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2884\/revisions\/2885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}