ANKARA - Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Ankara MP Filiz Kerestecioğlu asked Justice Minister Abdülhamit Gül about the systematic obstruction of the right to assembly and demonstration. In the parliamentary question submitted to the Presidency of the Assembly, it was stated that the right to assembly and demonstration is a right guaranteed by the constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.

 

‘Restrictions that interfere with the essence of the right to assembly’

 

In the parliamentary question, mentioned: ‘’After the declaration of the state of emergency and its thereafter, there were restrictions that interfered with the essence of the right to peaceful assembly. The intervention to the right in question, within the framework of the jurisprudences of the Constitutional Court and the ECtHR, is in question both in terms of the prevention of the meeting by the law enforcement during the use of the right and physical interventions, and in terms of the judicial processes carried out afterwards.’’

 

‘The element of democratic societies is freedom of expression’

 

Emphasizing that freedom of expression is the cornerstone of democratic societies, the parliamentary question noted: ‘’Subjects such as reporting the interferences with the right to peaceful demonstration, which is the private use of this right, analyzing the data in terms of the forms of interference with the right, and determining whether the said interference is on the basis of any discrimination, are of great importance in terms of making the barriers to the exercise of fundamental rights visible. We request the following questions to be answered in order to identify, report and analyze the interventions against the right to peaceful demonstration and judicial harassment against women, and to make the intersectional discrimination grounds visible while doing all this, for 'women', one of the social segments that have waged the most serious opposition in Turkey in the last 5 years.’’

 

The following questions were asked to the Minister of Justice:

 

‘’* In the last five years, how many women have been investigated for opposing the Law No. 2911?

 

* What is the numerical distribution of these investigations by province and year?

 

* How many women have their freedoms restricted (custody, detention, house arrest, judicial control) within the scope of the aforementioned investigations? What are the security measures applied based on the number of people?

 

* In the last five years, how many women have been prosecuted on charges of ‘’membership in a terrorist organization’’ or ‘’propaganda of terrorist organization’’? Are meetings and marches in the nature of the use of the right to peaceful demonstration included in the indictments?’’