In this briefing, Mary Sue Hafner, Deputy Staff Director to the Commission, addressed the state of human rights in Turkey and its failure to build effective, enduring democratic institutions. Hafner highlighted the most pressing issues as being torture, the rights of minorities, freedom of expression, and freedom of association.
Panelists focused on Turkey’s NATO membership, the assumption that Tukey would share values and ideologies with other NATO members, and the policy challenge their membership creates for the United States when battling Turkey’s human rights abuses. They also emphasized Turkey’s history of torturing their Kurdish population and questioned its ability to accommodate legitimate Kurdish cultural aspirations while maintaining its integrity as a state and a functioning democracy.
