Turkey boycotts Europe’s human rights conference over presence of NGOs

Turkey’s government is not attending Europe’s largest human rights conference because it was not allowed to prevent non-governmental organizations from participating, AP reported Tuesday. “Turkey is the only country boycotting… because it insists on having the ability to veto NGOs wishing to participate,” the US Helsinki Commission, a US government agency, said on Twitter on Monday. The yearly two-week conference, which opened in Warsaw, is organized by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The conference allows civil society groups, no matter how small, to participate on an equal footing with governments.