“Opponent and Judgment”… Erdoğan appoints himself as Chairman of the Human Rights Monitoring Committee
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Human Rights Action Plan was published Friday in the Official Gazette under the vision of a “free individual, a strong society, a more democratic Turkey.”
In a strange incident, the Turkish President appointed himself as Chairman of the Committee for the Management, Monitoring and Evaluation of the so-called Human Rights Action Plan, which will monitor the implementation of the Action Plan effectively and transparently, as well as follow up and coordinate the work of ministries and public institutions, to the dismay of many who believe that the Turkish authority wants to be both the adversary and the referee.
The committee will consist of the vice-president, the minister of justice, the minister of family and social services, the minister of labor and social security, the minister of foreign affairs, the minister of treasury and finance, and the minister of interior. He also made clear that in Erdogan’s absence, the council would be headed by a vice president.
The Turkish President had announced what he considered to be the Human Rights Action Plan, which is being implemented over a period of two years, a document containing 9 axes, 50 goals and 393 activities, and the Human Rights Watch Committee for Penal Institutions, this comes weeks after the naked inspection scandal in Turkish prisons, which the ruling regime denied.
Speaking at a meeting to announce a human rights action plan at the Bishkek Center for Conspiracies and Culture in Ankara, the Turkish President claimed that no one should be deprived of his liberty for criticizing or expressing opinions while respecting the personal rights of others, while the aim of the action plan seems to be to write a new constitution that would allow for an extension of Erdoğan’s rule.
Erdoğan said his regime had prepared the Human Rights Action Plan (HRP), considering it “an example that our will for change and reform is ongoing and will continue. The main determinant in the preparation of the HRP was the needs and demands of our nation.”
The Human Rights Action Plan was a document comprising 9 axes, 50 goals and 393 activities, and the Human Rights Watch Commission for Penal Institutions had been established, with the participation of representatives of bar associations, non-governmental organizations and universities. Extensive consultations have been carried out through geographic coverage of judges and prosecutors to strengthen judicial security.
Erdoğan claimed that the aim of the Human Rights Action Plan was to promote the independence of the judiciary and the right to a fair trial, and that “human beings have been living with their inalienable rights since their birth; The duty of the State is to protect and develop these rights. Human dignity is the essence of all rights and is effectively protected by law,” he said, adding that “everyone is equal before the law, without any discrimination on the basis of language, religion, race, color, sex, political opinion, philosophical belief, doctrine, etc. “We put above our heads any opinion that achieves justice accurately and gives people their rights.”
“We are expanding our special investigative offices to effectively investigate crimes of violence against women across the country. The penalty for offenses against the husband was also extended to the divorced wife. We will continue to fight with all segments of society until we reach the day when no woman is subjected to violence. It was also expanding marriage assistance to encourage young people to start a family. We reassess all legislation on expropriation, and provide administrative remedies to the provinces against expropriation without expropriation. We are working on increasing the use of renewable energy sources”.
Erdoğan’s remarks come at a time when violence against women has become a dark part of daily life in Turkey. The anti-femicide organization even announced that 29 women had died in Turkey during incidents of domestic violence, as well as 10 women had died in suspicious circumstances, last November, while the regime decided to break with the European Council Convention on Preventing and Combatting Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, or the Istanbul Convention, which is a convention against violence against women, which the European Council concluded and opened for signature on 11 May 2011 in Istanbul, Turkey.
Erdoğan’s claims are refuted by a bloody scandal last December, in which Turkish girls broke their silence and revealed the torture and forced nudity they had suffered in Turkish prisons.
A group of former prisoners posted shocking video testimonies on social media showing them being subjected to degrading search methods during their detention and harshly criticizing the ruling party of the Turkish president.
