Turkish lawmakers to boycott Council of Europe sessions

Lawmakers from Justice and Development (AK) Party and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) will no longer participate in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), the council's Turkey group chairman said on Wednesday.

Talip Kucukcan, who is also an AK Party lawmaker, told Anadolu Agency his party and MHP lawmakers decided not to participate in PACE's plenary sessions following the council's scandalous decision on Turkey.

"PACE made a scandal decision... I strongly condemn this decision. The decision to put Turkey on PACE's monitoring watch list is extremely wrong and I reject it," Kucukcan said.

"It is a decision that encourages terrorists and putschist," he said.

He added it justifies those who attempt to overthrow the Turkish government, assassinate President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and those who do not see the PKK terrorist group as a threat.

Turkey's PACE delegation consists of 18 members, including 10 deputies from AK Party, 1 from MHP, five from the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) and two from opposition Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).

On Tuesday, PACE announced it was placing Turkey on its political monitoring watch list following an investigation into the country's democratic institutions. The assembly had adopted the recommendations of observers by 113 votes to 45, with 12 abstentions.

It was the second time Turkey had been placed under monitoring, having previously been monitored from 1996 to 2004.