Marju Lauristin (S&D). – Madam President, we have to take very seriously the grim news which comes every day from Turkey about one more merciless violation of human rights, in prisons or elsewhere. And the latest messages coming from social media are an even stronger warning because there are signals on social media about a planned massacre in the prisons in Turkey under the pretext of planned unrest.

This could seem like fantasy, but for us – people who know well the history of Stalinism – it is a familiar pattern. Provocations of this kind and fake trials are part of a well-known pattern. It is important that the EU and you personally, Ms Mogherini, should do everything possible to ensure that we have an objective international team to investigate the situation of prisoners in Turkish jails, the situation with regard to torture, and the 21 suicides, or alleged suicides, and so on.

In this situation we really have no other option: if we want to be taken seriously as a guardian of human rights all over the world, then we have to react and we have to give Erdogan the clear message that he has stepped across all the red lines.

There is a way back – and that is why we want to freeze the talks, not to finish them. There could be a way back for the Turkish people, the Turkish nation, and we must do all we can so that the Turkish nation will have this way back.