The European Parliament is calling for an examination of possible sanctions against Turkish Justice Minister Ak\u0131n G\u00fcrlek due to political developments in Turkey.<\/p>\n
In a report adopted during a plenary session in Strasbourg on Wednesday regarding Turkey’s accession to the European Union, lawmakers called on the European Commission and EU countries to consider freezing assets in the EU for “key actors in Turkey’s repressive state apparatus.”<\/p>\n
The report said the promotion of G\u00fcrlek, the former chief public prosecutor, showed that throughout his career, he had consistently acted as a politically motivated actor.<\/p>\n
Turkey’s accession negotiations with the EU have been completely frozen amid ongoing concerns over democratic standards, the rule of law and fundamental rights.<\/p>\n
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan appointed G\u00fcrlek as justice minister in February. That also made him chairman of the Council of Judges and Prosecutors, which appoints legal professionals to courts.<\/p>\n
The appointment was highly controversial because, during his time as Istanbul’s chief public prosecutor, G\u00fcrlek ordered numerous investigations into politicians from the main opposition CHP party.<\/p>\n
The most prominent case concerns Erdo\u011fan rival and former Istanbul mayor Ekrem \u0130mamo\u011flu, who has been in pre-trial detention since March 2025 on corruption allegations.<\/p>\n
Turkey’s opposition views the case against \u0130mamo\u011flu as politically motivated and accuses Erdo\u011fan of seeking to sideline his most prominent rival with the help of the judiciary – a claim the government rejects.<\/p>\n
EU sanctions are decided by the bloc’s member states. Such a step would be politically sensitive because Turkey is regarded as an important partner in migration policy and is also a key NATO member.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The European Parliament is calling for an examination of possible sanctions against Turkish Justice Minister Ak\u0131n G\u00fcrlek due…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72203,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2387],"tags":[15424,1301,256,258,40,39931,39932,7887,945],"class_list":["post-72202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-european-parliament","tag-accession-negotiations","tag-eu-countries","tag-european-commission","tag-european-parliament","tag-european-union","tag-justice-minister","tag-minister-akin-gurlek","tag-plenary-session","tag-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}