{"id":1033344,"date":"2026-06-17T23:18:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T23:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1033344\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T23:18:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T23:18:14","slug":"turkey-rejects-eu-parliament-report-urging-sanctions-on-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1033344\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey rejects EU Parliament report urging sanctions on minister"},"content":{"rendered":"

Turkey on Wednesday rejected a report by the European Parliament<\/a> that called for possible sanctions on the country\u2019s justice minister and other officials it accuses of violating human rights and freedoms.<\/p>\n

The annual report approved in a plenary session earlier in the day, urges the European Union to consider freezing the assets of Turkish officials, including Akin Gurlek<\/a> – the former Istanbul chief public prosecutor who was promoted to justice minister earlier this year.<\/p>\n

The parliament\u2019s report portrayed Gurlek as a key actor \u201cin the state\u2019s repressive machinery,\u201d maintaining that his promotion was an indication \u201cthat throughout his career he has always been a political actor following a political agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a strongly-worded statement, Turkey\u2019s Foreign Ministry rejected the report, accusing it of unfairly targeting the justice minister.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe categorically reject the report\u2019s distortion of legal processes conducted by the independent Turkish judiciary and its targeting of our Minister of Justice with baseless accusations,\u201d the statement read.<\/p>\n

As Istanbul chief prosecutor, Gurlek presided over high\u2011profile trials against several members of the main opposition party<\/a>, the Republican People\u2019s Party or CHP – legal proceedings that the opposition has long denounced as politically motivated.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of officials from CHP\u2011run municipalities have been arrested in corruption probes. Among them was Istanbul\u2019s Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu\u00a0– widely viewed as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan\u2019s<\/a> chief rival – who was arrested last year.<\/p>\n

More recently, a court order deposed CHP\u2019s leader, Ozgur Ozel, from his post, replacing him with his largely unpopular predecessor, Kemal Kilicdaroglu. Critics denounced the move as a government attempt to neutralise the opposition.<\/p>\n

Erdogan’s government however, insists that the judiciary acts independently.<\/p>\n

It was unclear whether EU officials would want to spark Ankara’s ire by sanctioning a top government official. Turkey is a key EU partner in containing migration and an important NATO ally.<\/p>\n

The European Parliament’s annual reports aim to assess Turkey\u2019s progress in its EU accession negotiations which have stalled over concerns about its democratic backsliding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Turkey on Wednesday rejected a report by the European Parliament that called for possible sanctions on the country\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1033345,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[285041,88722,2000,285040,299,5187,1699,461],"class_list":["post-1033344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-akp","tag-chp","tag-eu","tag-eu-turkey","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-european-union","tag-turkey"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116768008668670551","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1033344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1033345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1033344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1033344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1033344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}