Turkey: A controversial report on minority rights

Monday Morning, Lebanon
Nov 8 2004

Debate over a report criticizing breaches of minority rights in
aspiring European Union member Turkey turned ugly last week when
members of a government-sponsored human rights group that issued the
document clashed in public.

The incident was the latest episode in a row within the Human Rights
Advisory Board, a body attached to the office of Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, which highlighted widespread hostility in Turkey to
advanced cultural freedoms for the country’s Kurdish and non-Muslim
communities.

Nationalist members of the board, which is comprised of government
officials, academics and civic groups, sabotaged a news conference
called to formally release the report, which makes some controversial
recommendations to the government and excerpts of which were earlier
leaked to the media.

Shortly after the head of the board, Ibrahim Kaboglu, had started
to speak, a nationalist unionist grabbed the papers from his hands
and tore them to pieces, yelling: “This report is a fabrication and
should be torn up!”

Kaboglu was forced to leave the hall, saying: “We can’t even hold a
news conference. This is the state of freedom of thought in Turkey”.
The EU, which Turkey is seeking to join, has long pressed Ankara to
grant equal cultural freedoms to its sizeable Kurdish minority as
well as smaller, non-Muslim communities such as Greeks, Armenians and
Jews. The document maintains that Turkey’s understanding of minority
rights had fallen behind universal norms and proposes far-reaching
amendments to the constitution and related laws, atop reforms that
Turkey had already undertaken as part of its EU membership bid.
The report describes as “paranoia” widespread concerns that equal
cultural rights for minorities could lead to the country’s breakup,
fuelled by a bloody Kurdish rebellion in the Southeast in the 1980s
and 1990s.

“There is no doubt that a more humane treatment by the state of its
own people will be much more helpful for the country’s unity… The
citizens the state should fear the least are the ones whom it has
granted their rights”, it says.

The report also underlines that for decades Turkey had breached its
founding instrument, the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which envisages
the free use by all Turkish citizens of any language in commercial
activities, meetings and in the press.

It maintains that non-Muslims in particular are subject to
discrimination and are sometimes treated as foreigners rather than
equal Turkish citizens.

Critics last week blasted the report as “a document of treason” and
asked an Ankara court to launch legal proceedings against its authors.