Gülistan Koçyiğit, a Peoples’s Democratic Party (HDP) MP and a member of the Human Rights Inquiry Committee of the Turkish Assembly evaluated the ‘Human Rights Action Plan’ that was announced by Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Koçyiğit criticized the announcement of the new action plan and stated that “it is a dream to expect a democratic constitution” from Turkey’s government. Regarding the ‘Human Rights Action Plan’, she stated that she did “not believe that this ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) coalition, this fascism in Turkey, can take any step towards human rights, democracy equality or law”.
“Such a government which already disregards the rights defined by the current constitution cannot apply a more democratic, a more liberal constitution or apply a ‘Human Rights Action Plan’. To expect this would be only a dream”, she said.
The government ‘approaches the prisons like concentration camps’
Koçyiğit commented on the conditions of the Turkish prisons and the approach of the Turkish government towards the prisoners. “We are talking about a government which approaches the prisons like concentration camps”, she said.
She argued that the Turkish government is “a government that has used the pandemic as an excuse to steal the rights of the prisoners and harden the already grim conditions of the prisoners, who have been already living under heavy isolation”.
‘Imralı is the place that reveals the king is naked’
The conditions of the prisons in Turkey and the prison isolation conditions on Imralı Island formed “a special focus” of the HDP’s recently announced “Justice for all” campaign, she noted. She also referred to the prison isolation conditions of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan on Turkey’s Imralı Island: “We believe that the Imralı issue is not independent of these discussions. Imralı lies within the grounds of these injustices we all suffer from”, she said. “The Imralı issue is a matter of exposing an unjust regime. Imralı is the place that reveals the king in his naked glory”.
