International

‘The Turkish parliamentary elections on 7th June promise to be exceptionally tense and exciting. The ruling AK Party is attempting to win a two-thirds majority, while the left Kurdish party is doing its best to get above the extremely high electoral threshold of 10% and social democrats and nationalists are shouting about how they’re going to put an end to the dominance of the governing party, whose founder Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is now Turkey’s President.’ So says SP Senator Tiny Kox, who heads an international team of observers from the Council of Europe. Days after the election he will be in Ankara to present the observation’s findings.

Today the European Parliament External Trade Committee voted on sections of the trade and investment treaty currently being negotiated between the EU and the United States. Despite massive social resistance to the establishment of the Investor-State Dispute Settlement system (ISDS), the Trade Committee voted in principle to support the ISDS. The fact that the social democrats voted to back the controversial system was in particular a painful aspect for the SP. In two weeks’ time the resolution will be voted on by the entire Parliament.