Turkey blasts EU for attending Egypt summit despite executions

Turkey has lashed out at European Union leaders for their double standards on the issue of human rights after they attended a summit in Egypt while turning a blind eye to the recent much-criticized executions in the North African state.

According to Press TV, speaking at an election campaign rally in Giresun Province on Tuesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the EU’s acceptance of an invitation by his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, to the first joint EU-Arab meeting in the city of Sharm el-Sheikh “shows how insincere” the 28-nation bloc is.

“The EU is against death penalties and execution is prohibited in EU member countries. So how can one speak about democracy in these EU states, which accepted the invitation of Sisi, who executed nine young men last week?” he asked.

Erdogan also accused Sisi of having executed at least 42 people since coming to power.

Separately on Tuesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said it was hypocritical for EU leaders to attend the Egypt meeting, noting that they “do not have values; they just have interests.”

“The whole EU leadership supporting Sisi and being in the same place as him on the days after these young saplings were executed, is a photograph of exactly what we are saying,” he said. “This is a double standard, it is hypocrisy.”

The nine Egyptians were convicted of involvement in the 2015 killing of Public Prosecutor Hisham Barakat.

Relations between Ankara and Brussels have been strained, especially since 2016 over the EU’s criticism of the scale of the post-coup crackdown and Turkey’s claim the bloc failed to show solidarity after the attempted overthrow.

Amnesty International said the victims’ “trials had been marred by torture allegations,” adding that it was just “a testament to the magnitude of injustice in the country.”

Additionally, UN human rights experts voiced alarm at the executions, saying, “These convictions appear to be in direct disregard of both Egyptian and international law and procedure.”

Furthermore, Ahmed el-Attar of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms emphasized that the Egyptian authorities should have suspended the executions until formal requests for their re-examination had been studied.

However, Sisi defended the death penalty during the Sharm el-Sheikh summit, saying the Europeans and Arabs had “two different cultures ... every region has its own circumstances.”

ME