HDP deputy calls on ECtHR President to reject honorary doctorate in Turkey

Photo: HDP

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Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Parliamentary Group Deputy Chair Meral Danış-Beştaş has called on European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) President Robert Ragnar Spano to reject the honorary doctorate he will be given during his two-day visit to Turkey.

"This [visit] might be a rule of courtesy. The Ministry of Justice has invited him and he will come," she said at a press conference at the parliament.

"Aside from coming to Turkey, he will receive an honorary doctorate from İstanbul University. We clearly tell the ECtHR President that the regime's doctorate does not comply with the ECtHR Presidency. Reject this doctorate," she remarked.

"You have very serious applications regarding Turkey, there are demands for the right to life and for a fair trial, immunity files, torture... While you are the president of an international court that will give a decision in these cases, you can't receive an honorary doctorate from İstanbul University.

"This makes your neutrality disputed strongly. How do we respect your verdicts? If the President of the ECtHR, which rejected Aytaç Ünsal's application yesterday, receives an honorary doctorate, how can we trust that he will give a fair verdict in cases he has? We can't trust.

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"İstanbul University is a university that dismissed hundreds of academics. The same university previously gave an honorary doctorate to Kenan Evren [leader of the 1980 military coup and former president], what else needs to be said? It is a matter of time that the issue of the dismissal [of academics] will come to the ECtHR."

Danış-Beştaş also noted that the Selahattin Demirtaş, the HDP's former co-chair who is currently behind bars, was not released from prison despite ECtHR rulings and Turkey was not sanctioned for not enforcing them.

"The ECtHR shouldn't do a law trade with Turkey. We can't accept that," she said," adding that "We don't certainly know what negotiations are made but we see that [there are negotiations]."

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(AS/VK)