71 German MPs in the Hamburg State Parliament issued a statement of support for the Peoples’s Democratic Party (HDP) and appealed toTurkey’s president to cancel their withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention.
The 71 German parliamentarians of the Hamburg State Parliament issued a joint statement to share their concerns regarding democracy in Turkey following the increasing pressures on the pro-Kurdish party HDP and Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention.
The lawmakers from the parliamentary groups of the Greens, Left-Wing, the Social Demcoratic Party (SPD) and the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) at the Hamburg State Parliament all signed the joint statement.
“We stand in solidarity with all democray forces in Turkey,” the 71 MPs said in the statement entitled “71 Hamburg MPs demand that “MPs belong in parliament and not prisons and Turkey must return to the Istanbul Convention! “.
“In recent days, we have witnessed events that have dramatically escalated developments in Turkey. On Saturday evening, Turkish President Erdoğan withdrew from the Istanbul Convention by a presidential decree based on homophobic grounds. In doing so, he by-passed the Turkish parliament, which had unanimously approved the convention signed by President Erdoğan in 2011,” the members of the Hamburg parliament who signed the statement said.
Pointing out that on the day when the immunity of the well-known human rights defender and an HDP MP Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu was lifted, proceedings were initiated to ban the country’s second-largest opposition party (HDP), the 71 MPs said, “678 HDP members are to be deprived of the right to engage in any political activity for at least five years. Many prominent figures in the opposition were also arrested. We, as the members of the Hamburg Parliament condemn the attempts to ban the HDP, and demand that Turkey end these attempts immediately and without any further delay release all people jailed on political grounds.”
The members of the Hamburg Parliament also stated that they “stand in solidarity with the women’s movement in Turkey and call on President Erdogan to return to and fully implement the Istanbul Convention As joint signatories, we stand in solidarity with the democratic forces in Turkey.”
