Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu is set to receive the International Association of Political Consultants (IAPC) Democracy Award for his “March for Justice,” according to a report by Hurriyet daily news on Sunday.
The IAPC Democracy Award is given every year to people or institutions that promote democracy in any country of the world, contributing to the dissemination of democratic thought, or courageously contributing to the development of democratic values and processes. The IAPC is a 50-year-old organization and has members across the world that vote for nominees for the award.
The organization held a conference between Nov. 9 and 12 in Iceland and declared the democracy awards for 2017. The IAPC was rewarded to Lech Walesa, Willy Brandt, Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev, Vaclav Havel, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, Isaak Rabin, Dr. Shirin Ebadi, Viktor Yushchenko, Bill Clinton and Dr. Mir Hussein Mousavi.
The CHP, under the leadership of Kılıçdaroğlu, carried out a “march for justice” and a “justice rally” after its deputy Enis Berberoğlu was sentenced to 25 years in prison on June 14, 2016 on charges of providing daily Cumhuriyet with video purporting to show Turkey’s National Intelligence Agency (MİT) trucks carrying weapons and ammunition to radical Islamist groups to Syria to topple down al-Assad regime.