Ax hangs over Turkey's EU bid as AKP pushes to revive death penalty
Turkey's president and now prime minister are speaking ever more boldly about reviving the death penalty despite the repercussions for the country's EU bid in what looks like a move to intimidate critics and also solidify the support of Turkish nationalists.
Turkey’s already bleak chances of becoming a full member of the European Union dimmed further today after the country’s prime minister, Binali Yildirim, announced plans to reintroduce the death penalty. Yildirim said a “limited measure” to bring back capital punishment could be drafted if a political deal with the opposition parties could be struck.
Turkey’s most notorious political detainee, Kurdistan Workers Party leader Abdullah Ocalan, will be relieved to learn that if adopted, the measure would not be applied retroactively. Ocalan was sentenced to death for treason in 1999.
His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment after Turkey scrapped the death penalty except for in times of war. When President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) catapulted to power in 2002, the death penalty was abolished altogether in line with the government’s then-determined push to open full membership talks with the EU.
In recent months, Erdogan has repeatedly hinted that he would approve a bill to revive capital punishment and finally saying, “If such a bill comes before me I will sign it.”
