Turkey's Slide On Religious Freedom

[JStone]

The annual report of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), released this week, contained some fairly bad news for Turkey. The commission, a bipartisan federal watchdog that monitors religious freedom around the world, this year put Turkey on its list of "countries of particular concern" (CPC). That puts the NATO member, European-Union aspirant and stalwart NATO ally in the company of repressive countries such as Burma, Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, and Uzbekistan, a "who's who of dictatorships and closed societies," as one report put it. “It’s no coincidence that many of the nations we recommend to be designated as CPCs are among the most dangerous and destabilizing places on earth,” USCIRF Chair Leonard Leo said in a statement. “Nations that trample upon basic rights, including freedom of religion, provide fertile ground for poverty and insecurity, war and terror, and violent, radical movements and activities.”
Turkey: A Religious Freedom Downgrade Elicits Strong Dissents | EurasiaNet.org

 

[ekrem]

The tiny (budget $3 million, staff of about 20) advisory panel has long been, as our colleague Michelle Boorstein noted, “rife . . . with ideology and tribalism” and oft-accused of an anti-Muslim bias.
(And the members are not even paid.)

The Washington Post


Didn't you open the same just last week?

 

[JStone]

In an annual report released on Thursday, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the top judicial body to rule on human rights violations in Europe, found that Turkey is by far the worst violator of human rights among the 47 signatory states of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Human rights violations in Turkey « European Court of Human Rights