Speech
delivered at the Current Affairs Debate on ‘Europe's
common fight against terrorism:
Successes and failures’ PACE General Assembly, 29 June 2017,
Strasbourg
By Talip KÜÇÜKCAN,
Head of Turkish Delegation to the PACE
Mr
KÜÇÜKCAN (Turkey) – I thank the Presidential Committee and the Bureau
for unanimously accepting our proposal to debate our common response to the
global phenomenon of terrorism.
I
begin by asking an existential question. Are we safe? Do we feel safe in our
streets, schools and hospitals? Are we safe in concert halls, museums and train
stations? As recent events and trends in Europe and elsewhere indicate, we are
not safe. It is obvious that events and terrorist activities and attacks in
London, Moscow, Berlin, Paris and Brussels, the capital of the European Union,
show that we are not safe. We have to accept this reality and address the
coming challenges, otherwise our future will be taken hostage by terrorist
organisations.
This
is a global threat. Terrorism recognises no borders, no ethnicity, no religion,
no sectarian identity and no regional borders. A terrorist organisation will
emerge in one particular area but it will hit many different places. The most
recent examples are Daesh, the PKK and the PYD, which threaten our very existence.
Terrorism is not just a threat to one country or region but to our common
existence, our democratic institutions and our political life. Where there is
terrorism and political instability, democratic institutions cannot function.
Member States and members of the Assembly must have a comprehensive view and
strategy to combat terrorism.
We
must refrain from stigmatising one group of people, one ethnicity, one
religion, one sectarian group, when we talk about terrorism. It is a global
phenomenon and the victims of terrorism are of many nationalities, ethnicities
and religious groups. We need to recognise that this is a global threat and,
wherever terrorism occurs, we must have a common response. Your home town or
country may not be hit by a terrorist organisation, but that does not mean you
will be safe for the rest of your life.
We come from a country that is
fighting various terrorist organisations, so we can share some of our
experiences. We must not only look at the end results; most of the time, we discuss
the consequences of terrorism yet refrain from looking at the root causes.
Unless we resolve those root causes, rather than looking at the victims and the
consequences, we will not win the war against terrorism.
If
we look at the root causes of the situation in Syria, for example, Daesh and
other non-State actors use terrorism as a means to achieve their goals. There
is no political stability in that country because a war is going on among
various ethnic and sectarian groups, and terrorism has been instrumentalised.
Unless we establish stability in the region – in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen –
we will not be able to win the war against terrorism. Those who live in Berlin,
London, Moscow and Paris should recognise this.
Terrorism
sees no borders. Terrorists travel freely. They can recruit people from your
countries, and we have to do something about it. Many young people influenced
by terrorist networks and organisations travel from one country to another. We
have to set up a mechanism to confront this issue. We call on the members of
the Council of Europe to recognise the shortcomings that we face.
We
have seen several hash tags recently, such as #PrayforParis, #PrayforAnkara,
#PrayforLondon and #PrayforNice. Regrettably, there have been failures in combating
terrorism globally, otherwise terrorists could not hit the cities at the heart
of our nations. We therefore feel that the international community should find
a new agenda, new perception and new methods to continue fighting all terrorist
organisations with determination. We should investigate the effectiveness of
the measures that we have taken so far. In my view, despite the steps that we
have taken, we face a number of problems in fighting terrorism.
First,
Council of Europe member States should be actively involved in delivering what
is stipulated in the Council of Europe additional protocol to the Convention on
the Prevention of Terrorism, which addresses the phenomenon of terrorist
fighters, through measures to prevent third-country citizens from travelling to
Syria to join radical groups. All Council of Europe States should include
suspected foreign terrorist fighters on their no-entry lists. Turkey has been
doing so actively, and 52 000 names are on our list. Those people should
not be allowed to travel. Where Daesh is concerned, Turkey has been doing its
duty as well. We are in a volatile region, and as Syria’s neighbour, Turkey is
one of the first targets of that terrorist organisation. It is time for us to
recognise Turkey’s efforts to combat Daesh terrorism.
I
remind you that social media are used actively to recruit young people, so we
need to monitor them. People usually object to monitoring social media, in the
name of freedom of expression and freedom of the media, but this is not correct.
Our existential values are threatened, so we have to take important measures by
looking at social media and the media at large. Sometimes we see that
terrorists and terrorist ideas are glorified by people in the media, and we
have to stop that.
I
must address PKK terrorism. Turkey has been facing this terrorist organisation
for the past 40 years, and many people have died. We need a common response,
because the PKK is active in most of your countries in different ways.
Sometimes it is as a civil society organisation or a media outlet, but we know
and the United Nations has recognised that the PKK recruits people and raises
funds in your countries that are then channelled to the PKK in our region. Let
me tell you about the PKK’s latest victim, a female teacher aged 23, who was
killed two weeks ago in the place where she was teaching music to Kurdish kids.
We need to look at this and recognise that such organisations are now targeting
their own people as well.
Finally,
I warn all of you about an organisation that tried to overthrow the Turkish
Government on 15 July last year, killing 252 people and injuring more than
2 000. Fethullah Gülen’s terrorist organisation sometimes appears to be a
society for intercultural dialogue, but as we have seen in Turkey, it is a cult
that is recruiting your young people. This is a friendly warning to all of you.
We would like your co-operation with Turkey on a regional and a global level to
combat terrorism. Of course, we are prepared to co-operate with you on all
fronts. I thank you again for holding this debate.
