Association may be Closed before it Opens

Lawyer Orhan Kemal Cengiz, who set up the association with seven other friends, wrote a letter to Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and talked about the obstacles the association faced since the day it was established.

"Even if there are certain faults requiring that the association is closed down, asking that it is completely dissolved is like attacking a mosquito with a tank," Cengiz wrote in his letter.

The Human Rights Agenda Association has not even begun operating yet. Changes were required in twenty-two articles of the standing rules of the association in the four months after its establishment.

Even after the changes were made, there was a demand to close down the association because three of the changes were not made within the legal period. The amount of fees was among articles that were required to be changed.

Lawyer Cengiz said they had applied to an Izmir court to have the demand rejected. In his letter to Erdogan, Cengiz also said that the administration was not only interfering in the content but also in the operation of the association. (YS/BB/EA/YE)