An animation has been published online on the birthday of Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Öcalan has also been denied the right to family visits for the tenth time since 2018, and continues to be denied legal visits. Meanwhile 46 international NGOs have called upon the Turkish government to apply the rule of law in the ongoing legal manoeuvres to shut down the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) ahead of the elections to be held in June 2023.
Amnesty International has also condemned the continued backslide in the rule of law in Turkey in its major annual report on rights violations across the globe. Baseless prosecutions of human rights defenders, the deterioration of women’s and migrants’ rights, the silencing of political dissent and allegations of torture are all highlighted in Amnesty’s 2021 country report on Turkey. Turkish actress Beren Saat too has condemned the erosion of human rights, the rule of law and progressive values in Turkey, in a speech in her capacity as Climate Ambassador for the Eco-Climate Economy and Climate Change Summit.
Citizens are suffering from poverty in Turkey because of the rise in the cost of food products as a result of the deepening economic crisis in the country.
And massive pressure continues to be brought to bear on the Yazidi community in Northern Iraq, earlier victims of an attempted genocide by ISIS, as the Iraqi government continues to build a wall separating the community from the support they have been receiving from North and East Syria.
All these stories in our Daily Medya News Review video.