MESOP MIDEAST WATCH – SHAME ON BRITISH LABOUR ! – Labour Bans Three Kurdish Attendees From Conference While Cosying up to Turkey – Atlanticism is back, baby.

by Rivkah Brown 28 September 2022 Rojname Kurdish News – President of The Circle Foundation Enes Guzel pictured with Keir Starmer at Labour party conference, September 2022. The foundation focuses on UK-Turkey relations. Three Kurdish attendees were turned away from this year’s Labour party conference, among them a former local mayor. All had travelled to Liverpool and were refused entry at the door, the party claiming they had failed security clearance.

The decision has raised questions about undue influence within the party of groups affiliated with the Turkish state.

Ali Gul Ozbek is a Kurdish Alevi former Labour councillor who between 2015 and 2017 served as mayor of Haringey, a London borough home to a large Kurdish community.

Ozbek has been attending party conference for 14 years without issue. “This year, all of a sudden, I couldn’t get a pass.”

“I thought it must be a mistake,” he told Novara Media. “I’ve been a member for longer than 90% of MPs.”

Also refused entry was British-Kurdish activist Elif Sarican (the third activist declined to be interviewed by Novara Media). Sarican was due to speak at a Unite fringe event about the trade union campaign to free imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan.