Rights Watchdog: Turkish Government is ‘Undermining Democracy’

Human Rights Watch warns that President Erdoğan’s administration is employing abusive measures to dismantle the country’s primary opposition faction.

Mikhail Klimentyev / Russian Presidential Press And Information Office / TASS

Human Rights Watch warns that President Erdoğan’s administration is employing abusive measures to dismantle the country’s primary opposition faction.

Saturday, May 24th saw a rights watchdog claim that Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government was undermining democracy with “abusive tactics” against the main opposition party.

Turkish authorities arrested 13 members of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) across several regions on Saturday, according to the Istanbul prosecutor’s office, prompting the claims. The detentions are part of an official probe that led to a court order ousting the opposition party’s leadership on Thursday, May 21st.

Following the arrests, Human Rights Watch condemned the judicial intervention as “the latest deeply damaging blow to the rule of law, democracy, and human rights” in Turkey. The NGO stated that these moves reflect “ongoing abusive tactics by the Erdoğan government to remove the CHP as a political force.”