The Diplomat
The Spanish Government protested yesterday to Turkey for the retention and expulsion of ten Spanish citizens, including three parliamentarians from Unidas Podemos, Bildu and ERC, who were in the country to monitor last Sunday’s presidential elections.
According to diplomatic sources informed The Diplomat, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday sent a note verbale of protest to the Turkish Government to express its displeasure for the retention “without justification and explanation”, and the subsequent expulsion, of the Spanish observers.
According to the same sources, the Spanish Embassy in Ankara contacted the affected parties and the Turkish authorities from “the first moment that news of the detention was received”, and the ambassador, Javier Hergueta, carried out all kinds of steps, following the instructions of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, to expedite the release of the detainees.
Among those detained and expelled were the representatives Ismael Cortés and Jon Iñarritu, from Unidas Podemos and Bildu, respectively, and a senator from ERC. The delegation also included the secretary of the CUP, Isa Chacón, and the Asturian trade unionist Tino Brugos. The objective of this delegation, according to the Secretariat of International Relations of Podemos in a communiqué, was to follow the election day in the town of Siirt, in southeastern Turkey (former constituency of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and hometown of his wife, Emine Erdogan).
The ten Spaniards were detained on Sunday night by the Turkish police in Siirt, some of them after the closing of the polls and while attending the counting of the votes and the rest in the hotel where they were staying, and were taken to a police station, where they were held overnight without explanations. They were subsequently escorted on Monday to Istanbul, where they were met by Spanish Embassy staff and shipped back to Spain, Podemos added.
“It is unacceptable that the Turkish government has detained for hours, against their will, without explanations or under unfounded charges, more than a dozen people, including several public officials, to be accompanying during the election day,” the party denounced in the statement. This “new and intolerable example of repression” demonstrates the “authoritarian drift of the regime” of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it added. Apart, the purple formation warned in a tweet that “the first victim of Erdogan’s authoritarianism is the Turkish society and political opposition” and, therefore, “the international community and the EU can no longer remain silent in the face of these anti-democratic outrages”.
For her part, the secretary general of Podemos and Minister of Social Rights and Agenda 2030, Ione Belarra, expressed yesterday on Twitter her “solidarity with all those invited to accompany the elections in Turkey, including a deputy and a representative of Podemos, held without reason.” This fact, she added, is “an expression of the repression, lack of transparency and guarantees that affects the country and especially the Kurdish people.
