Foreign and Commonwealth Office written question – answered at on 13 December 2018.
Emily Thornberry
Shadow Foreign Secretary
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what recent representations he has made to his Turkish counterpart on the continued detention of Selahattin Demirtas in violation of an order of the European Court of Human Rights for his release.
Alan Duncan
Minister of State
We have not made representations about the detention of Selahattin Demirtas since the European Court of Human Rights ruling, though we have followed his case and made a number of attempts to observe his trials. We have repeatedly raised with the Turkish authorities the need for any legal processes, including those against MPs, to be conducted fairly, transparently and with full respect for the rule of law.
Yes1 person thinks so
No2 people think not
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Also referred to as the ECHR, the European Court of Human Rights was instituted as a place to hear Human Rights complaints from Council of Europe Member States; it consists of a number of judges equal to the number of Council of Europe seats (which currently stands at 45 at the time of writing), divided into four geographic- and gender-balanced "Sections" eac of which selects a Chamber (consisting of a President and six rotating justices), and a 17-member Grand Chamber consisting of a President, Vice-Presidents, and all Section Presidents, as well as a rotating selection of other justices from one of two balanced groups.
Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
