PACE General Assembly sessions will be held in Strasbourg next week, and before these sessions begin, a group has been formed out of mostly AKP parliamentarians. The group is called “Free Democrats” and right now has 20 members.

There are 7 members from Turkey, 5 from Italy, 4 from Azerbaijan, and 1 each from Serbia, Romania, Bosnia-Herzegovina and San Marino.

To form a group in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) , at least 20 parliamentarians from at least 6 countries is needed. Italian parliamentarian Adele Gambaro has been appointed the chair of this pro-AKP group. Gambaro had at one point been involved in populist politician Beppe Grillo’s “5 Star Movement” in Italy.

This pro-AKP group is the sixth political group in the PACE and will not be able to take advantage of the PACE budget until 2019 according to the bylaws because it was founded in the second half of the year.

The pro-AKP group has been founded at a time when tensions between the Erdoğan regime and Western countries are higher than ever.