Rebecca Harms, the president of the Green-European Free Alliance group and a member of Alliance ‘90/The Greens at the national level, has called for an extraordinary meeting of EU foreign ministers to discuss the latest developments in Turkey.
Turkey attracted widespread criticism last week from the EU and the US due to its crackdown on the Cumhuriyet daily, an opposition newspaper, and the second largest opposition party in the country, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which resulted in the arrest of many journalists and HDP politicians including the party’s co-chairs.
In remarks to German news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) on Sunday, Harms said EU countries reacting to the latest developments in Turkey through diplomatic means individually would not be influential. She said the EU should give a joint response to Turkey over its crackdown on dissent.
Turkey arrested the editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet and eight staff members from the daily on Saturday, while HDP co-chairs Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ were arrested along with seven other Kurdish deputies on Friday.