It is getting more difficult to fight Islamophobia in Europe: UN official Gün Kut

It is becoming more difficult to fight Islamophobia in Europe, as mainstream political parties compete for votes with the far-right, Gün Kut, a member of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) since 2010, has told the Hürriyet Daily News.

"As extreme right-wing views started to gather public support, some center-right parties started to embrace some of the rhetoric that is normally used by extreme right in order to prevent the fleeing of their fringe voters toward the extreme right. Meanwhile the center-left, which usually supports these anti-racist efforts, has become more silent in order not to lose fringe voters.

You have been working for at least two decades on international commissions to combat racism. Tell us your general observation about the evolution of this issue. 

Discrimination on the basis of color, ethnicity, nationality and language exists everywhere, but it takes various forms and varies in intensity. The problem may be getting worse over time but there are also more and more solutions provided. So it is a mixed bag of results. Unless intense efforts are exerted on tackling the issues, things are going to get much worse. If there has been slight improvement it's thanks to these international mechanisms.

Let's talk about our region, Europe and the Middle East.

After the end of the Cold War there was a very strong support from governments to deal with these issues. There was a huge pressure for all Council of Europe member countries to establish or improve their legal infrastructure to deal with racism. So while on the one hand over the past 20 years we can observe the rise of extreme right movements in Europe, at the same...