UK human rights lawyer says trade agreement with Turkey shameful

In a letter to Trade Secretary Liz Truss British human rights lawyer Margaret Owen said she was shocked to learn of the deal, Britain’s first since leaving the European Union, on the anniversary of the 2011 Roboski Massacre.

British human rights lawyer Margaret Owen has urged Britain to reconsider its post-Brexit trade deal with Turkey warning that any agreement with such a genocidal regime brings shame in front of the world.

In a letter to Trade Secretary Liz Truss she said she was shocked to learn of the deal, Britain’s first since leaving the European Union, on the anniversary of the 2011 Roboski Massacre, in which 34 innocent civilians were killed in a Turkish air strike.

“You are signing a massive trade deal with this genocidal, racist, misogynist, war-mongering government that scorns all international standards and breaches its own domestic laws,” Ms Owen wrote.

“We implore you to reconsider this deal.  It shames us before the world, shows us as putting the desperate post Brexit search for trade, commèrce, arms sales far beyond any consideration of human rights,” she appealed.

Ms Owen highlighted last week’s European Court of Human Rights hearing which ruled that former Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) co-chair Selahattin Demirtas continued detention was unlawful and politically motivated.

But President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ignored the court’s ruling that Mr Demirtas should be released immediately as he continues to ride roughshod over democracy, the barrister said.

Ms Owen, who was awarded an OBE by the Queen for her human rights campaign work in 2013 is a longstanding supporter and friend of the Kurdish people.

As a patron of Peace in Kurdistan, she has been part of the Imrali delegation which was blocked from visiting jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan and has travelled to Rojava and Bakur on a number of solidarity trips.

Last year, at the age of 87, Ms Owen joined the hunger strikes in solidarity with then HDP MP for Hakkari Leyla Guven in a bid to end the isolation of Mr Ocalan by the Turkish state and stop the British government from being “accessories to genocide.”

In her letter she cited the recent jailing of Ms Guven for more than 22 years on trumped-up terrorism charges as one of the reasons to scrap the trade deal.

Britain should not normalise relations with Turkey “when thousands of political prisoners languish confined in unhygienic cells without fair trials; when the Erdogan regime commits multiple human rights violations and war crimes targeting Kurds in Turkey and Syria and when women activists and human rights defenders are especially targeted, assassinated, raped, tortured, and detained,” the letter said.

Turkey is Britain’s second-largest export market with bilateral trade deals worth £18.6 billion last year. A deal is scheduled to be signed today (Tues) with a note prepared by diplomats allowing it to be implemented before the December 31 deadline when Britain leaves the EU single market.

But according to Ms Owen any deal struck with such a brutal, authoritarian regime risks ruining any reputation Britain once had for an ethical foreign and trade policy.

“We appeal to you to think again,” she said. Ms Owen is awaiting a response to her letter from the British government.