Turkey warned ‘death penalty is incompatible with Europe’

Turkey was warned against re-establishing the death penalty by the Council of Europe yesterday, as Ankara stepped up its crackdown on the failed July coup by firing 10,000 more civil servants.

“Executing the death penalty is incompatible with membership of the Council of Europe,” the 47-member organisation wrote on twitter, a day after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his government would ask parliament to consider reinstating the death penalty.

Erdogan told supporters in Ankara that his government would take the proposal to parliament, without specifying a specific timeline.

Turkey abolished capital punishment in 2004 as the nation sought accession to the European Union.

Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz denounced Turkey for considering a move that would “slam the door shut to the European Union”.

“The death penalty is a cruel and inhumane form of punishment, which has to be abolished worldwide and stands in clear contradiction to the European values,” Kurz told the Austrian Press Agency.

Ankara formally launched its EU membership bid in 2005. Since then, the bloc has opened 15 negotiating chapters out of 35 required to join, but to date only one has successfully been completed.

In August, Council of Europe Secretary-General Thorbjorn Jagland previously warned Ankara off capital punishment, noting the European Convention on Human Rights, which Turkey has ratified, clearly excluded it.