The National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL), a voluntary association of hundreds of progressive lawyers, law students and paralegals giving pro-bono services, expresses its solidarity with the Turkish people in their militant mass actions against their government’s antidemocratic and antipeople policies.
NUPL likewise condemns the brute force being used by government forces against civilians, including the continuous crackdown, arrest and torture of antigovernment activists, among them lawyers, students, workers, journalists and teachers.
NUPL, which is also an affiliate of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, most particularly demands the release of the 46 lawyers in Istanbul who were arrested, imprisoned and are now being subjected to a series of political mass trials after being accused of supporting so-called terrorists and of being members of an “illegal” association. These lawyers represent the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) Abdullah Ocalan, and their continued detention is a brazen violation of international law and conventions.
Further, the continuing unrest in Turkey is an evident manifestation of the Turkish peoples’ disgust with the government’s brutality, exploitation and oppression of the Kurdish and Turkish peoples. NUPL urges the Turkish government under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to respect the people’s exercise of their right to assembly, speech and expression and to heed the people’s clamor for fundamental change.
The government under Erdogan has a hideous human rights record, notorious for reportedly holding the world’s largest number of political prisoners.
—EDRE U. OLALIA,
secretary general,
National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers,
nupl2007@gmail.com