Any move by Turkey’s parliament to use opposition lawmaker Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu’s wrongful conviction for a social media post as a pretext to strip him of his parliamentary seat and jail him would compound the serious violation of his right to freedom of expression and violate the voters’ right to choose their representatives, Human Rights Watch said in a statement on Tuesday.
According to a report in the Stockholm Center for Freedom, the statement came one day before a court decision is read in parliament that will strip Gergerlioğlu of his membership in the legislature.
Gergerlioğlu is a prominent human rights activist and a member of parliament since 2018 for the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), a left-wing party with majority Kurdish support. One of the most outspoken critics of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government’s appalling record on human rights, Gergerlioğlu was found guilty in February 2018 of “spreading terrorist propaganda” on the basis of a 2016 social media post that did not advocate violence.
“Any move to strip Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu of his parliamentary seat as a prelude to jailing him would look like a reprisal by the Erdogan government for his brave and vocal stance in support of thousands of victims of human rights violations,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Gergerlioğlu’s conviction is a blatant violation of his right to free speech and using it as a pretext to expel him from parliament would show deep disdain for democratic norms and the right to political association.”
On August 20, 2016 Gergerlioğlu tweeted and commented on a news story briefly reporting that the leadership of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed secessionist group listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the European Union and the US, had called on the Turkish state to take a step towards peace. The news story also carried a lengthy response to the PKK’s call by Bülent Arınç, the then-speaker of parliament and former deputy prime minister.
Gergerlioğlu said, “This [the PKK’s] call should be properly considered, there’s no end to the issue, they are saying yes if Öcalan gets involved,” making the argument that imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan should be involved in a renewed peace process to end the decades-long armed conflict between the Turkish state and the PKK. Gergerlioğlu was convicted for this tweet sharing the news article and its accompanying photograph of PKK fighters. But no one from the news website that published the article was prosecuted, and the news article itself with the photograph is still accessible online and has never been the subject of any court order blocking it or requiring its removal.
“Gergerlioğlu’s 2016 tweet falls squarely within the boundaries of protected speech and there are no grounds on which to argue that it could be either necessary or proportionate to prosecute him for words which state an opinion and do not incite violence,” Human Rights Watch said. “His prosecution and conviction are a serious violation of his rights to freedom of opinion and expression and take place in the context of widespread and systematic violations of free speech by the Turkish government that have accelerated following the coup attempt in 2016.”
Before he was elected to parliament in the 2018 general election, Gergerlioğlu was well known for his engagement over many years in human rights activism alongside his professional work as a doctor. After he was arbitrarily dismissed by emergency decree from working in the public health sector, he served briefly at a private hospital and continued his human rights work.
After he entered parliament, Gergerlioğlu made human rights his main focus and has been a voice for tens of thousands of people arbitrarily dismissed and jailed in the aftermath of a 2016 coup attempt.
“At a time when few members of parliament or activists have been speaking up for the rights of people unjustly targeted for their links with the Fethullah Gülen movement, which Turkey regards as a terrorist organization responsible for the coup attempt, Gergerlioğlu has not shied away from his principled and impartial stance in defending their rights,” Human Rights Watch said. “He has made a huge contribution by telling the stories of ordinary people subject to deep injustice and by championing them in their struggle for dignity and recognition regardless of their political and social affiliations.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, a faith-based group inspired by Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen, since the corruption investigations of December 17-25, 2013, which implicated then-Prime Minister Erdoğan, his family members and his inner circle.
Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan designated the movement as a terrorist organization and began to target its members. He intensified the crackdown on the movement following the coup attempt on July 15, 2016 that he accused Gülen of masterminding. The crackdown also targeted political opponents of the government, Kurdish activists and human rights defenders, among others. Gülen and the movement strongly deny involvement in the abortive putsch or any terrorist activity.
In recent weeks Gergerlioğlu has raised the issue of routinely reported strip-searches of women taken into custody as a cruel and degrading practice. His work to highlight the issue has received wide coverage in the Turkish media but has been met with full or partial denials by the prison authorities and members of parliament from the ruling party.
“The deeply flawed conviction of Gergerlioğlu for a social media posting should not become the pretext to expel him from parliament and into jail,” Williamson said. “A decision of the Constitutional Court is pending on his case and in the meantime the government would do better to seriously address the human rights concerns raised by Gergerlioğlu and let him carry on his legitimate parliamentary work as an elected deputy.”
