Thank you for the opportunity.
I will briefly state that my mandate has been in direct public communication with the Turkish government on its terrorism legislation, but most recently, in the last four months, on its adoption of countering terrorism finance legislation. This legislation is being used to directly target civil society, human rights defenders and those who dissent from the government.
We have made clear that the use of terrorism measures against civil society is a breach of international law. It is, in fact, a distortion of why we have counterterrorism measures in the first place.
I am deeply concerned that we have a number of governments—and this has been explicitly stated by my office to Turkey—that are misusing counterterrorism legislation to undermine legitimately protected actions—freedom of expression, speech, assembly, family life, right to participate in public affairs—by invoking the terminology of terrorism in order to have legitimacy and cover for actions that are inconsistent with international law.