ANKARA, April 26 -- The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) voted on Tuesday to reopen its monitoring procedure against Turkey, a decision that can potentially jeopardize Turkey's European Union bid amid deteriorating relations between Ankara and Brussels.
Ankara immediately reacted to the decision, announcing that "such a decision leaves no choice to Turkey but to reconsider its relations with this institution," the 47-member Council of Europe which is separate from the EU but represents in a broader sense the European bloc' s political soul.
The PACE voted in favour of restarting its monitoring of Turkey's respect for fundamental freedoms, which concluded in 2004, with 113 of the assembly's lawmakers voting in favour, 45 against and 12 abstained.
The report called on Ankara to lift its state of emergency and release the many politicians and journalists arrested in the wake of the failed coup in July 2016 under its anti-terrorism laws.
The report also proposed for monitoring to be reopened as a measure to improve cooperation between the Strasbourg institution and the Turkish authorities. The text expressed serious concerns about the constitutional amendments that passed in Turkey's 16 April referendum transforming the parliamentary system in a presidential one.
While the report acknowledges the difficulties posed in the aftermath of the coup attempt and by the ongoing terrorist threats by the Kurdish rebels and the Islamic State (IS), it also criticizes Turkey for a "serious deterioration of the functioning of democratic institutions" manly because of the vast purges orchestrated by Ankara against suspected members of the Gulen organization, led by the U.S. exiled Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen that the government accuses of being the mastermind of the coup plot.
【国际英语资讯:Spotlight: Turkey-EU ties face even more rough time after PACE decision】相关文章:
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