Meeting of the Monitoring Committee of the Congress of Local and regional Authorities of the Council of Europe 

Izmir, Turkey, 4 July 2011

Statement by Congress President Keith Whitmore on the case of Leyla Güven

Ladies and Gentlemen,

In an exchange of views during the Statutory Forum of the Congress, in Strasbourg on 17 June, an issue was raised about the situation of Mrs Leyla Güven, a Turkish member of the Congress who remains in detention in her country. It was decided that I address this situation at the meeting of the Monitoring Committee.

The continued detention of dozens of local elected representatives in Turkey, including Mrs Güven, remains a cause of grave concern for the Congress.

Mrs Güven was elected Mayor of Viransehir in March 2009. In September 2009 she was appointed a member of the Congress and the following month she delivered a keynote speech in the Congress plenary debate on local democracy in South–East Anatolia.  Two months later she was detained in a large-scale arrest of Kurdish politicians, and remained incarcerated ever since.

The Congress Bureau has expressed its concern about this situation, which remains permanently on its agenda.

In May 2010, Council of Europe Commissioner of Human Rights, Thomas Hammarberg, visited Mrs Güven in Diyarbakir prison. In his statement of 26 May, he expressed his worry at the arrest of a number of notably Kurdish mayors, including Leyla Güven, who was in detention without any indictment.

The Congress referred to the case of Mrs Güven in its monitoring report on Turkey, debated in March this year, and stressed in the adopted recommendation that the application of anti-terrorism legislation had a disproportionately destructive effect on the functioning of local and regional democracy in this country.

The President and the Secretary General of the Congress have written to the Turkish authorities on several occasions, requesting to meet with Mrs Güven. This request has been refused by the Turkish Ministry of Justice on account of her “legal status”, according to a letter we received earlier this month from the Turkish Permanent Representation in Strasbourg.

We have raised the issue of Mrs Güven’s detention with the Turkish authorities, Commissioner Hammarberg – most recently on 22 June – and Mr Gerard Stoudmann, Special Envoy of the Council of Europe Secretary General on press freedom in Turkey, during our Statutory Forum on 17 June.

Mrs Güven’s case is not an isolated one. Dozens of other mayors and city councillors  are in detention in Turkey on similar charges. While it is not our intention to interfere with Turkish judicial procedures, the Congress insists that it is not in the spirit of the European Charter of Local Self-Government, which Turkey has ratified, that the seats of local elected representatives remain vacant for such long periods of time. It is indeed alarming and debilitating for the democratic process when such a significant number of elected representatives are prevented from exercising their mandates and fulfilling their duties to the citizens who elected them. This is an affront to local democracy and a blatant disrespect of the people’s will.

This situation has created a crisis of democracy in Turkey. Six members of parliament of Kurdish origin, elected on 12 June this year, stood election while in detention. The other 30 members of parliament of Kurdish origin are refusing to take their parliamentary seats until their 6 colleagues are released.

If Turkey wants to retain its image as a model for new emerging democracies to follow, then it should think seriously about the democratic deficit that is brought about by locking up so many elected representatives, on remand and in pre-trial detention.

 

We also insist that the Congress, as a political representative body of local and regional authorities of our continent, has the right to visit its members anywhere, including in places of detention. We believe that elected representatives have a right to visit their colleagues and to maintain proper dialogue with them. To deny this is to interfere with the democratic process.

The Congress therefore calls on the Turkish authorities to grant its request to visit Mrs Leyla Güven. The Congress also calls on all its members to raise this issue with the Turkish Ambassadors in their respective countries and to express publicly their support of the Congress’ demand.