Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in the context of "Irakli Kobakhidze"

A constitutional referendum was held in Turkey on 16 April 2017 on whether to approve 18 proposed amendments to the Turkish constitution that were brought forward by the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). As a result of its approval, the office of Prime Minister was abolished and the existing parliamentary system of government was replaced with an executive presidency and a presidential system. The number of seats in Parliament was raised from 550 to 600, while, among a series of other proposals, the president was given more control over appointments to the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK). The referendum was held under a state of emergency that was declared following the failed military coup attempt in July 2016.

Early results indicated a 51–49% lead for the "Yes" vote. In an unprecedented move, the Supreme Electoral Council (YSK) allowed non-stamped ballots to be accepted as valid. Some critics of the reform decried this move to be illegal, claiming that as many as 1.5 million ballots were unstamped, and did not recognize the results. Large-scale protests erupted following the results in order to protest the YSK's decision. In subsequent reports, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) both criticized unfairness during the campaign and declared the YSK's decision to be illegal.

The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML) is a European treaty (CETS 148) adopted in 1992 under the auspices of the Council of Europe to protect and promote historical regional and minority languages in Europe. However, the charter does not provide any criterion or definition for an idiom to be a minority or a regional language, and the classification stays in the hands of the national state.

The preparation for the charter was undertaken by the predecessor to the current Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, the Standing Conference of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe because involvement of local and regional government was essential. The actual charter was written in the Parliamentary Assembly based on the Congress' Recommendations. It only applies to languages traditionally used by the nationals of the State Parties (thus excluding languages used by recent immigrants from other states, see immigrant languages), which significantly differ from the majority or official language (thus excluding what the state party wishes to consider as simply local dialects of the official or majority language) and that either have a territorial basis (and are therefore traditionally spoken by populations of regions or areas within the State) or are used by linguistic minorities within the State as a whole (thereby including such languages as Yiddish, Romani and Lemko, which are used over a wide geographic area).

The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe (French: Comité des ministres du Conseil de l'Europe) or Committee of Ministers (French: Comité des ministres) is the Council of Europe's decision-making body. It comprises the Foreign Affairs Ministers of all the member states, or their permanent diplomatic representatives in Strasbourg. It is both a governmental body, where national approaches to problems facing European society can be discussed on an equal footing, as well as a collective forum, where Europe-wide responses to such challenges are formulated. In collaboration with the Parliamentary Assembly, it is the guardian of the Council's fundamental values; it monitors member states' compliance with their undertakings. The Holy See, Japan, Mexico, and the US are observer states in the Committee of Ministers.

The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE; French: Alliance des Démocrates et des Libéraux pour l'Europe, ADLE) was a transnational alliance between two European political parties, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party and the European Democratic Party. ALDE had political groups in the European Parliament, the EU Committee of the Regions, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. There were assorted independents in these groups as well as national-level affiliate parties of the European-level parties.

The pro-European platform of ALDE espoused liberal economics, and supported for European integration and the European single market.

The Statute of the Council of Europe (also known as the Treaty of London (1949)), signed on 5 May 1949, brought into existence the Council of Europe, an international organisation open to all European states devoted to "the pursuit of peace based on justice and international co-operation". The Statute sets out the guiding principles of the organisation - to uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law - as well as the mandates and functioning of its two statutory bodies, the Committee of Ministers and the Parliamentary Assembly.

The original signatories in 1949 were Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom, though the Statute has now been signed and ratified by 46 European states. Only Belarus, Kazakhstan, and the Vatican City (the Holy See) are not members, while Russia was expelled from the Council of Europe on 16 March 2022 after 26 years of membership - the only country ever to be expelled in the history of the Organisation - because of its aggression against Ukraine and invasion of a fellow member state, regarded as an extreme violation of the Statute.