Kurdish Political Representation and Equality in Turkey

After my two trips to Syria, we produced reports and had debates in Parliament. However, as hon. Members will know, geopolitics cannot be isolated to one country. The middle east is a tapestry of cultures, languages and identities, but years ago colonial powers divided the region, as they did much of the world, into modern nation states without a proper regard for all the people who lived there. The Kurdish people are one of the largest ethnic groups in the world without a homeland. Geographically, they are split between Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. They have different challenges in each of those countries, and the scale of oppression has varied throughout history. We all know, of course, that Saddam Hussein murdered over 100,000 Kurds in Iraq in the 1990s, one of the darkest chapters of Kurdish history. However, today Kurds in Iraq have a relatively stable, successful regional Government, with autonomy from the Iraqi central Government, although that is not also without its challenges.

What I saw in Syria, however, was that, alongside the existential threat of Assad, Turkey had ended up taking a hostile approach to the Kurds in north-east Syria and at times was even resorting to pushing and helping jihadis along that border. To understand the motivations of Turkey—a supposed ally of ours—and why it was so hostile to a group of people who had helped to bring down ISIS, the APPG decided that it was important to return our focus to Turkey. Following a number of reports by previous Select Committees on Foreign Affairs and a parliamentary delegation observing political trials of Kurds in Turkey four years ago, it was felt that it was time to bring the focus back to the internal politics of Turkey and to see what had happened in the intervening period.

We therefore launched the inquiry almost a year ago, on 9 November 2020, and the terms of reference agreed were to ask the following questions. What are the main obstacles to Kurdish representation in Turkey? What are the relevant gender aspects to the crisis of Kurdish representation? What relationships do the Turkish Government hold with the Kurdish diaspora communities? To what extent can the UK Government influence policy on these issues, and what are the best means of support for consolidating democracy in Turkey, promoting peaceful co-existence and harmony in the region?

Those terms of reference were translated into Turkish and Kurdish, distributed widely in the UK and Turkey, and as chair of the APPG I and a number of others did interviews on Kurdish and Turkish television stations to promote the inquiry. We wrote directly to the ambassador to get his input. Although his response was short, I appreciate that he responded to our request.

As well as a call for written evidence, we held a number of oral sessions, which were roughly themed into the following categories: political representation, civil society, press, gender issues and, finally, the issue of the PKK, the currently banned Kurdistan Workers Party, which is the militant arm of the Kurdish struggle. Those are the themes around which I will structure today’s discussion, and they are also the themes on which our report, which Members will have received electronically, was structured.

The first session focused on elected officials, with MPs sitting in the Turkish Parliament giving evidence to us. One was from the HDP, the People’s Democratic Party, the majority Kurdish and progressive political party, and the other was from the CHP, the Republican People’s Party, the main opposition party in Turkey, but widely regarded as modern Turkey’s founding party.

I would like to read some of the testimony from the HDP witness. Hişyar told us:

“Over the last three weeks, I received four different, what they call, summary of proceedings”—

most of them were unfounded—which

“demanded to lift my parliamentary immunity so that I can be prosecuted. When my parliamentary mandate ends, all of those summaries will turn into court cases and I will be sentenced, or I will have to leave the country.”

There is a great deal of precedent for targeting MPs. In the past six years, the former HDP chairs were arrested for alleged connections to the PKK. Part of the Government’s case was that they had used the words “Kurds” and “Kurdistan” in public speeches in 2012. The other citation in the case was that they had been involved in the creation of the PKK. The PKK was created in 1978, when both the co-chairs were five years old. We can clearly see that this does not seem to stand up to fair and due process.

We not only heard from MPs in Turkey; we also took evidence from municipal leaders, one of whom was elected a mayor but is now in exile in Greece. The APPG heard that since the last local elections in 2019, 59 of the 65 elected municipal leaders have been replaced by Government-appointed trustees. A human rights report quoted in our report says:

“Regardless of which party or candidate they voted for, the will of…more than 4 million…voters living within the boundaries of 48 municipalities”

has been

“seized through the appointment of trustees.”

Our inquiry also took evidence on the closure of the Democratic Society Congress—the DTK—an organisation bringing together politicians and civil society that advocates not separation but confederalisation in Turkey, and that is its crime. Actions taken have included the arrest of its leaders, as well as the targeting of the Kurdish political youth organisations. One refugee is in my constituency because of the persecution he faced.

On Kurdish political representation, the APPG made nine findings. I will not read them all out, but I will mention a few. We found that trials have been increasingly conducted in closed central courts in Ankara and not the open divisional courts in the home provinces, making a defence harder for a Member of Parliament. The APPG also found that there have been routine cases against 154 MPs—154 MPs have received indictments; this is not just a few people who have done objectionable things —and that the legal proceedings are being used to tackle political disagreements, which in turn disproportionately affects Members of Parliament from Kurdish backgrounds. We also found that the human rights of municipal leaders are violated routinely by detaining them pending trial or sentencing them to prison on trumped-up charges.

Our report was 56 pages in total, with 32 recommendations for the UK Government. We received comments based on the first-hand experience of MPs, mayors, civil society and women’s organisations, and I sent the report to the Minister in July. I received a one-and-a-quarter-page reply, the substantive part of which said:

“We were concerned by recent reports of increased violence in the region and the Minister for the Middle East and North Africa tweeted on 1 September calling for de-escalation.”

Is a tweet really the maximum amount of our diplomatic effort? It would be nice to know more about what the Government have been doing. Over hundreds of hours, we collected work on the report and made concrete recommendations. I would like the Government to give some concrete responses.

Will the Minister and the Government demand the release of the HDP co-leaders, in accordance with the decision by the European Court of Human Rights in December 2020? Will she condemn the closure of the DTK and remind the Turkish Government of their previous commitment to find a peaceful solution to the ongoing conflict? Will the Government push the Turkish Government to accept the revised European charter on the participation of young people in local and regional life, which is a Council of Europe charter for young people, so that it applies to young people in Turkey? Finally, what will the Government do to press the Turkish Government to uphold the rule of law and democratic principles in Turkey?

I now turn to the issue of discrimination through language and culture. Having gone through the first section of my speech, I will now try to rattle through the other sections. The inquiry received evidence from the Education and Science Workers’ Union in Turkey, which had conducted its own report. It stated that 200,000 children in Diyarbakır alone and 6 million children in south-east Turkey were being denied an education entirely or being forced to learn exclusively in Turkish and not their mother language. This is, of course, a denial of human rights, and it also makes it impossible for children to be helped in their studies by their parents or caregivers, which puts them at an immediate disadvantage as they grow up.

The inquiry also received a report from the Kurdish Language and Culture Network, which suggests that there had been enforced and targeted discrimination against the Kurdish community, particularly where they had expressed their culture in language and other traditional practices. We found that in the last five years 57 Kurdish cultural institutions and organisations had been closed down, including theatres, just for staging plays in the Kurdish language.

Will the Government condemn the Turkish Government’s decision to close multiple institutions that uphold Kurdish cultural life? Furthermore, what steps will the Minister take to raise this issue with her Turkish counterparts? Will she discuss the support that the British Council could offer in Kurdish-English work and co-operation?

I turn now to gender-based oppression in Turkey. Historically, Turkey has retained a low representation of women in its Parliament. In 2020 the World Bank calculated that 17% of seats were held by women, which is below the global average of 25%. The HDP operates a co-chair system, whereby a man and a woman co-chair the party and many municipalities. The HDP maintains a quota of 50% female candidates and, I think almost uniquely for any political party in the world, 10% of Members must come from the LGBT+ community. That means that repression of Kurdish and Kurdish-supporting MPs has ended up disproportionately affecting women and LGBT+ people, because they are disproportionately represented—not disproportionately according to the population, but in the Turkish Parliament.

The practice of having co-chairs has even been cited by the Turkish Government as evidence of links to the PKK, which was the first to use the co-chair system. That is further evidence that the expansive practice of just sharing any similar idea or practice with the PKK will mean that an organisation is branded as terrorists. It is clearly ridiculous.

It is not just the HDP that has been targeted in a gendered way. The Free Women’s Congress and 49 other women’s organisations were closed down in the state of emergency that was declared in 2016. As a result of that declaration, the bank accounts of many of these women’s organisations were closed, making it impossible for them to continue to operate.

In the evidence submitted by the TJA—the Free Women’s Movement—the Kurdish women’s organisation, it stated that in 2020, 2,520 women reported to non-governmental organisations cases of physical and gendered violence, 775 women applied for shelter, and 113 women reported cases of sexual assault. In the 18 years that the AKP has been in power, femicide in Turkey overall has increased by 1,400%. That is a shocking amount.

According to Amnesty International, one third of all the world’s jailed journalists are imprisoned in Turkey. That is a disgraceful statistic, so may I ask the Minister: will the Government condemn the measures to restrict freedom of speech implemented in Turkey and remind the Turkish Government that criticism of the Government —criticism of any Government—is a fundamental aspect of the public’s right to participation? What will the Government give to support journalists so that they are able to uphold their freedom of speech?

Finally, I will turn to the PKK, but before I do, please may I ask this? I know that in much of the correspondence Ministers are focused on the PKK element, but the other elements are really important for me and I really want a strong focus on them. That was one of the reasons why I was initially nervous about raising the PKK issue at all. I thought that maybe we should just ignore it. The problem is that, as we heard evidence, it became clearer and clearer that we cannot delink these issues, because of the Turkish Government’s expansive view of what supporting the PKK is. As I have mentioned, journalists, politicians and other civil society actors are routinely accused of terrorism if they support the wider beliefs of the PKK.

Without getting into a debate on the nature of terrorism, it is clear that terrorism that has the aim of national sovereignty is a slightly different beast from terrorism that aims to impose fundamentalist ideology on a reluctant people, but the age-old debate about whether someone is a terrorist or a freedom fighter has been had over decades in this place. However, there is a set of international definitions of what it means to be a terrorist and the legal consequences of acting in a terrorist manner. Those that do so should be prosecuted and proscribed, but the UK Government already make a distinction for Turkey. They recognise that the YPJ and YPG—the Kurdish units in the Syrian defence forces—are not terrorists but are anti-terrorist in their nature. Although the Government call on them to distance themselves from the PKK, they recognise that, in reality, many of their views, and some of their activities and training, are shared. That has been recognised in the British courts, and the Government have rightly diverged from the Turkish Government, who still regard the YPG and YPJ as terrorist organisations. The Turkish Government are so obsessed with the YPG and YPJ but they have supported jihadis who are often proscribed in the UK.

I have mentioned the Turkish Government’s expansive definition of terrorism: anyone who supports Kurdish political leaders or even just gender equality. It becomes an extremely slippery slope. Therefore, will the Minister make it clear that supporting Kurdish aspirations for some form of autonomy, supporting Kurdish political leaders, or even supporting those who have renounced violence and who call for dialogue should never be a reason for someone to be fearful of an accusation of terrorism? I do not ask the Minister that for an academic purpose; I do it because recent cases in Belgium, and potential cases in other European countries, show that the Turkish Government are increasingly and proactively trying to persuade their so-called NATO allies to prosecute those who support the Kurds. That is producing a chilling effect in Kurdish communities in this country and around Europe. Any listing must be based on evidence of indiscriminate violence, a determination to undermine and destroy democracy, and an intolerance of other people’s views.

The second line of defence in the Belgian court case, where the Supreme Court failed to convict the defendants for running a Kurdish newspaper and radio station, was that they were simply not terrorist acts, and that the listing of the PKK was based on information that had been discredited. I have a list here but will not go through it, because I know my time should have been up already. Here is the list of the pieces of evidence that were given to the European Union in the listing of the PKK. One can go through each one of them and show that they are not acts of the PKK. A number of them have been acts of the Turkish police force or Turkish army, and Turkish courts have prosecuted Turkish authorities for such acts, but they are still listed as PKK acts, even though Turkey and its courts recognise that they are not. There needs to be a review of this situation, as the Turkish courts have shown.

More interestingly, the Belgian court case and the APPG heard from the lead defence lawyer. The court upheld their defence on the first point: that the PKK are a national movement of self-determination in a legal civil war. The treaties on definitions of terrorism that Belgium has signed up to are the same treaties as Britain has signed up to. All bar one explicitly say that if civil war actors are covered by the laws of war, they cannot be regarded as terrorists, and the one that does not mention that is just silent about all definitions. That is of course quite right; it is to stop anyone just labelling their opponents as terrorists when there is a legitimate internal conflict taking place. Under the Geneva and Hague conventions, the laws of war outline the requirements to be classed as an actor. One of the things is a command structure, and another might be an identifiable uniform. Suffice it to say that the Belgian Supreme Court found on all counts that the PKK fulfilled those requirements. Therefore, it could not be classed as a terrorist organisation. In finding that the PKK was involved in a belligerent and internal conflict, the court struck down the terrorist listing.

The same process also happened in the European Court of Justice, where a Europe-wide listing was struck down, and the justices found that the PKK had not met the European or international listing definitions. Although we are not a member of the European Union, the laws of war that interpret treaties are now directly part of our domestic laws and we are signatories to the international treaties that they interpret.

A quirk of terrorism law is that organisations are proscribed at the European and international level annually, so although they have been struck down from previous listings they are currently listed, and the courts are now going through a process of striking down their current listings, adding them again after the case, but of course no new evidence has been provided as to why they should be re-listed. That makes a mockery of the proscribing process, with people being arrested and prosecuted for being part of a proscribed organisation, only to find midway through their trial that the organisation is no longer proscribed.

The British Government need to re-look at the case for the proscription of the PKK and take into account the latest evidence from the Turkish courts and the terrorist acts that were not committed by the PKK but by others. The Belgian and European courts have said that they should be classed as internal belligerents, not terrorists.

A strong fight against terrorism can be achieved only if the listings that the Government maintain are accurate and not liable to change. Will the Minister commit to conducting an immediate review with her Home Office counterparts and report back to this House? To those who say that designating the PKK as a belligerent might give credence to those that target civilians, I say that the crime of targeting civilians in war under the Geneva and Hague conventions is a more serious crime with a higher prosecutable level in international courts and a higher punishment than the crime of terrorism, so de-listing and classing them as belligerents provides less incentive for civilian attacks.

If we are to seek peace in Turkey, we must see how organisations can go from being classed as terrorist to seeking political solutions through political aims. The UK’s role in Colombia, although not perfect, and incomplete, shows how the FARC could be brought into a mainstream political discussion. If we look at our history in Northern Ireland and the African National Congress in South Africa, each is different and unique, but each had a process that has ended politically and not violently, and that is what we all want to see in Turkey.

Finally, what serious discussions have the Government had with Turkey about restarting the peace negotiations? What practical support have the Government given for domestic and international channels for the discussions? What role do the Government see in third pillar negotiations between civil society actors, trade unions and women’s organisations to ensure a peaceful settlement of the conflict? Although the death toll might not be large, the APPG found that political representation was high and increasing. It found that the basic principles of democratic freedom were being undermined, and terrorism laws were being misused to shut democratic spaces rather than keep them open. The APPG and I are sure that Members here today would like to work co-operatively with the Government. I hope that we might be able to get fuller responses to the APPG in time.

Britain has a powerful role in holding Turkey to account on human rights and its violation of international law and the European convention on human rights. We must be bold in our demands to put an end to these injustices, to protect political representation and inalienable human rights and to ensure peace and stability for all communities living in Turkey.

I want to focus in particular on the report’s recommendations to revisit the automatic listing of the PKK as a terrorist organisation, especially considering the outcome of the case in the Belgian Supreme Court, which found that the PKK was a legitimate combatant in a civil war, rather than a terror organisation. That historic ruling must have significant ramifications for our Government’s position. I call on the Government to take up the report’s recommendations to review the listing of the PKK as a terror organisation in the light of that evidence. Britain has a significant amount of power to progress the conditions for a return to peace talks, both as a unilateral actor and through European institutions.

I am proud that the UK Labour movement stands resolutely with the Kurdish people. I welcome the work by the all-party parliamentary group for Kurdistan in Turkey and Syria on the report, which contains a number of important recommendations. I call on the Government to do everything in their power to adopt the recommendations, hold Turkey to account as our ally and take urgent steps to secure progress towards resuming peace talks.

Erdoğan’s regime refuses to distinguish between the PKK and the democratically elected HDP, which won 11.7% of the national vote in the 2018 parliamentary elections and 65 local municipalities in the 2019 local elections. Since August 2019 the Interior Ministry has removed 48 elected HDP mayors, on the basis that they face criminal investigation and prosecutions for links to the PKK. Repeating the approach taken in 2016-17, the Government have replaced mayors in the south-east with Ankara-appointed provincial governors and deputy governors as trustees.

In sharp contrast, the HDP’s pluralist and inclusive platform has resulted in its popularity among diverse groups in Turkey. The inclusion of minority groups, including Kurds, as well as Alevis, Armenians, the LGBT community, women’s rights organisations, secularists and other ethnic minorities such as Yazidis and Assyrians, has been key to expanding the HDP’s appeal. The success of the parties pursuing that agenda shows that there is real appetite on the ground in Turkey for a movement away from the regressive attitude pursued by Erdoğan’s regime.

While movement towards those positions by parties such as the HDP is crucial, it is key that, in addition to efforts made from within Turkey, the international community also uses its influence to support people on the ground. I welcome the work of the European Court of Human Rights and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in recent years to highlight the persistent erosion of Kurdish rights in Turkey, and call on the UK Government, alongside international partners, to continue to put pressure on their Turkish counterparts. I am sure the Minister will set out the UK Government’s fantastic relationship with Turkey and the significant role that Turkey plays within NATO—it has been repeated before.

However, I have asked before and I ask again: as allies, surely we should be calling on Turkey to stop the abuse and persecution of Kurds and Kurdish politicians. If we cannot ask our friends to stop this, how do we deal with the less friendly nations? How much longer will the UK Government stand by and let this disregard for human rights continue? The rights of Kurds and other minorities in Turkey have been at best ignored and at worst abused, for far too long. It is time for change. I urge the Minister to take note of the 32 recommendations set out in the APPG’s report and call on Turkey to stop the persecution of Kurds and come to the table to negotiate for a peaceful solution to the Kurdish question.

The Foreign Affairs Committee report that was published in 2017 identified that as a central challenge for the President of Turkey. In what direction was he going to take Turkey? He had an opportunity then, and he has an opportunity now with Abdullah Öcalan as his prisoner, who has ceased to have any aspirations for Kurdish independence. If one looks at the Kurdish minorities in the other main countries where they appear—Syria, Iraq and Iran—it is plain that any aspiration for a greater Kurdistan is, frankly, for the birds at the minute. It is not even an aspiration that is front and centre of most Kurdish discussions. The referendum in Iraq was a total disaster for the Kurds and now seems a profound mistake. Even the Kurdish Syrians we went to see in north-east Syria had to take Syrian protection, in effect, in the face of the threat that came from Turkey in the north.

I look forward to the reply from my right hon. Friend the Minister and to hearing if some of the balances expressed by her predecessors, in answer to such debates, have begun to shift and if we are now beginning to say something more robust about what global Britain stands for, or if we cannot say anything about our relationship with Turkey and the pretty dreadful things going on in regard to the values we ought to share with the Turkish Government, who have plainly gone very badly wrong and are not seeking the opportunity to find a route to peace in the PKK-inspired civil war.

I concur with the points that have been expressed about closely questioning the PKK’s terrorist designation. It is designated a terrorist organisation because Turkey has asked us to do that. Frankly, that is not adequate and needs proper examination, if possible in our courts, to see if they would come to the same conclusion as the courts of Belgium. I look forward to the Minister’s contribution to see if matters are now moving in a more satisfactory direction in respect of the values we seek to stand for.

Regarding Turkey in particular, we have to be blunt. Turkey is an important ally, but the actions of the Turkish state vis-à-vis the Kurds fall well below the standards we should expect of a Council of Europe member, a NATO ally and a friend of Scotland and the United Kingdom. A state can be judged by the way that it treats minorities. As I have said, Turkey is an important ally and a member of NATO; it deserves great praise for the safe haven that it has given to millions of refugees from the conflict in Syria and Iraq, with European and UK support. It is an ancient culture and a wonderful place to visit. It is a fantastic place that is currently being governed badly. It is also illegally occupying part of an EU member state in Cyprus. It is increasingly autocratic; it jails journalists. As we have heard, a third of the journalists jailed worldwide are in Turkey. In its treatment of the Kurds, it has embarked on a decades long campaign of oppression.

Closing down democratic dialogue can never work. Closing down democratic dialogue with aspirations of self-determination can only lead to a bad place. In March this year, as we have heard, the Turkish state banned the People’s Democratic party, the HDP. I remember expressing concern in the European Parliament in 2009, when the Democratic Society party—the HDP’s predecessor—was similarly shut down. This is a long-standing campaign from the Turkish state to shut down the legitimate aspirations of the Kurdish people, and to shut down debate. This is a deliberate pattern. The most recent ruling banned 600 HDP party members from participating in politics for five years, and the HDP co-chairs, Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ, have been jailed. I was lucky enough to meet Ms Yüksekdağ in Edinburgh a few years ago; the idea that she is involved in terrorism is, flatly, risible. She is a political prisoner.

I am conscious that the Minister is sitting in for other Ministers, and I am also realistic about the leverage that the UK has over the Turkish state—that needs to be said. I feel for the Minister and view her as a colleague in this discussion. However, I do have some questions. I would be grateful for an update on what the UK Government have done to press for the release of political prisoners, like the two HDP co-chairs, but there are plenty of others. On arms export licences, the UK has sent £212 million-worth of materiel to Turkey. What human rights assessment has been made of those arms exports, and what reassurance can we hear that those arms have not been used in the oppression of the Kurdish people? I am happy to have the answer in writing, if not today.

More widely, and this is an honest offer as much as it is a question, what efforts have been made by the UK Government to promote dialogue between the Kurds and the Turkish state? I would say that Scotland offers a model, in that we have a devolved system of government within these islands. Obviously, Scotland’s history is completely different from that of the Kurds. We were an independent state for far longer than we have been part of Great Britain. We have a different political culture here and in Scotland. However, there is a need for an honest outside broker in this discussion. There is a need for outside scrutiny. This is not just an internal matter for the Turks to rule on for themselves.

If the Minister is looking for resources, we have plenty in Scotland. We have excellent NGOs, like Beyond Borders Scotland, that are well used to facilitating dialogue and have previously been active in Kurdistan. We have a civil society and a political culture that would be ready and quick to help.

Speaking frankly, there is always a degree of hypocrisy in international relations. The question for the UK Government is: are we on the right side of the line? We must be much more vocal about the deficiencies of the Turkish state, the oppression of the Kurdish people and the right of the Kurdish people to more international support than they have had. If the Minister agrees, she will have the total support of the SNP.

As we have heard from hon. Members across the Chamber today, this is not a new issue. Many right hon. and hon. Members have asked questions in the House about Kurdish people in Turkey, and specifically about the discrimination and repression that they face and have historically faced, not least in the form of military action and the curtailing of their cultural freedoms. The hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) talked about a robust definition of global Britain; that must surely include an answer to the question of what our role is. Personally, I found it a little troubling that, following the Brexit vote, the first excursion that the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), the then Prime Minister, made was to Turkey to shake hands with the President and to sell more weapons.

As the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Stirling (Alyn Smith), said, we need assurances that our own manufactured weapons are not being used for internal repression. I know that that is an element of the way that our procedures work, and that my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown has expertise in this area. However, we seek assurances that those weapons are not being used for any violence against Kurdish people in Turkey.

Obviously, the Kurdish communities in Turkey are not a single homogeneous bloc. Some Kurds have even served as senior Government Ministers in the AKP Government. That said, the Kurdish minority as a whole, and particularly those who support the Opposition in Turkey, experience appalling levels of discrimination, which have no place in a democratic society. We have heard of the detention and removal of dozens of Kurdish and Kurdish-supporting regional mayors—48 regional mayors have been arrested—and of the removal of 154 lawmakers in Ankara. Imagine if 154 MPs were locked up here—imagine the outcry! The political voice of pro-Kurdish political parties is being eroded by the current Government and, with it, the democratic wishes of the Kurdish people are being ignored and attacked.

We heard about Mr Demirtaş, and his ongoing imprisonment, from my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North. What specific representations has the Minister made to President Erdoğan in relation to Mr Demirtaş, and can we expect his release any time soon? What representations have been made about the abuse of courts by the Executive over what should be a legal matter, rather than something where the Executive are overruling the courts?

The greatest example of the ongoing attack against the Kurdish people is the attempt by Turkish authorities to ban outright the HDP itself. The HDP has been a staunch supporter of Kurdish rights since its formation, and garners much of its support from Kurdish areas. In the years since it was founded, the Government have moved to stifle its progress. Since 2016, it has been estimated that more than 10,000 parliamentarians, elected officials and party members have been imprisoned. As we know, the Turkish authorities are attempting to ramp up the pressure and choke off the HDP, through shuttering it and denying representation to the millions who have freely cast their votes for that party. Such a move, against a political party that has been supported by many Kurds, is an affront to democracy.

I heard at first hand from HDP lawmakers earlier this year about their concerns for their position, and for Turkey’s democracy more generally. The attack on Kurdish rights, the rule of law and the fundamental freedoms of democracy is deeply concerning. We heard about the freedom of the press from my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson), and in a very good speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown, which went into the detail at length, so I will not repeat that now.

We urgently need the UK Government to take a more active role. We heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar) that, as Turkey is a major NATO ally and a friend of the UK, we cannot and should not sit by and allow this to happen. We should feel able to criticise our friends and allies when they are doing wrong and praise them when they are doing right—for example, on the refugee crisis, in which Turkey is making an enormous contribution, not just in numbers, but in education and health services. That is not lost on those of us who see that good work. However, equally, if we are friends and allies, we must be able to say when we are worried, and the treatment of the Kurdish minority worries us deeply.

In her summing up, I hope that the Minister will outline her response, or the Department’s assessment of the legal case in Belgium, because it would be good to have on the record in Hansard the FCDO’s assessment of the Belgian court finding that the PKK was not a terrorist organisation. My understanding is that the UK’s position is still that elements of the PKK are terrorists, but I would like to know whether officers within the FCDO have looked at the legalities of the Belgian case. The UK signs up to the same treaties as Belgium, and we have the same norms and values, so could she please outline where the Belgians might be taking a different view from any UK legal counsel?

Finally, I will conclude by thanking all Members for being here for today’s debate. Thank you, Dame Angela, for your excellent chairing of the debate, and I very much look forward to hearing from the Minister. Given that there is so much time left in the debate, I hope that she will accept some short interventions.