Criticism pours in from the world: This assembly is a defeat for Erdoğan.

The government has come in for stiff criticism at the ongoing NATO session in Istanbul.

cumhuriyet.com.tr

The 62nd Annual Session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly being held in Istanbul has been marked by harsh criticism from the delegations for Ankara and President Tayyip Erdoğan. Austrian Green Party MP Peter Pilz said, “The NATO PA is turning out to be a real shambles for Erdoğan. Apart from Azerbaijan, no country accepts what Erdoğan is doing. This is a defeat for Erdoğan.”
Alongside developments following the coup attempt in Turkey, breaches of rights, the silencing of dissenting voices, pressure on the freedom of media and expression, the remanding of the HDP MPs, the appointing of curators to municipalities, debate over the death sentence and the proposal for sentences to suspended if the victim of a sexual abuse crime marries the perpetrator, featuring on the agenda for the sittings forming part of the session hosted at the Hilton Bomonti Otel are the operation against our paper and the remanding of our columnists and managers. On the second day of the session yesterday, an alternative sitting was held at the behest of the Austrian Delegation. Austrian Green Party MP Peter Pilz, who addressed the sitting, said: “The NATO PA is turning out to be a real shambles for Erdoğan. Apart from one Azeri MP, nobody is defending Turkey. Apart from Azerbaijan, no country accepts what Erdoğan is doing. This is a defeat for Erdoğan.” Included on the agenda at yesterday’s morning sitting that was attended by the entire Austrian, Belgian, German and Luxembourgeois delegations was the operation against our paper and the remanding of our columnists and managers.
Pilz, accusing President Erdoğan of using the intelligence service to provoke anti-government sentiment among citizens of Turkish origin living in Austria, continued as follows: “The Association of Independent Industrialists and Businessmen (MÜSİAD) makes up one prong of this and the Union of European Turkish Democrats (UETD) another. We have ignored this for years. The time has come when we must take action. If Turkey’s European Union accession process is not to be ended, it must be frozen immediately.”
At the session, attended by the HDP’s NATO PA MP Ziya Pir and the HDP’s Foreign Affairs Appointee and Vice Co-Chair Hişyar Özsoy, NATO PA Treasurer Marc Angel asked the HDP MPs whether relations between the AKP and Fethullah Gülen had changed before and after the 15 July coup attempt. Angel made the noteworthy comment, “Prior to 15 July no particular complaints were forwarded to us about Gülen.”
 

AKAR: PROVE IT AND I WILL RESIGN

The Annual Session went through a tense few minutes yesterday. Chief of the General Staff Four-Star General Hulusi Akar attended the Defence and Security Committee sitting. When Armenian MP Koryun Nahapetyan raised the point that twenty-six countries had recognised the Armenian Genocide and inquired why Turkey had entered Syria and Iraq and when Turkish soldiers would leave Syria, Four-Star General Akar reacted angrily and said, “If anybody says with reference to Aleppo that Turkey and the Turkish Armed Forces have fired a single shell, I will resign. This is impertinence, it is an aspersion and a lie, this is immorality.” Akar, pointing out that the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by some countries did not change anything, said, “When in the sixteenth century Galileo said that the earth rotated, the entire world said that it didn’t. If all countries say there was genocide, this does not alter the fact that there was no genocide.”