HRW REPORT: HUMAN RIGHTS TREND IS "RETROGRADE"
BIA
Jan 31 2008
Turkey
The annual Human Rights Watch Report on Turkey is pessimistic about
developments. The report condemns freedom of speech violations,
harassment of the DTP, violence against minorities and civilians.
Recent trends in human rights protection in Turkey have been
retrograde. 2007 saw an intensification of speech-related prosecutions
and convictions, controversial rulings by the judiciary in defiance of
international human rights law, harassment of pro-Kurdish Democratic
Society Party (DTP) officials and deputies, and a rise in reports of
police brutality.
The state authorities’ intolerance of difference or dissenting opinion
has created an environment in which there have been instances of
violence against minority groups. In January 2007 Turkish-Armenian
journalist and human rights defender Hrant Dink was murdered.
Armed clashes between the military and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party
(PKK) rose in the lead-up to elections in July and intensified yet
further in the second half of the year, with heavy loss of life;
some attacks-such as a suspected PKK bombing in Ankara in May-have
targeted civilians.
Prior to the general election, the Turkish military intervened directly
in the political arena by voicing opposition to the ruling Justice
and Development Party (AKP) government and by decisively influencing
a constitutional court decision to block the presidential candidacy
of the AKP’s Abdullah Gul. The AKP nevertheless won 47 percent of the
vote in the early general election precipitated by the presidential
crisis, and subsequently secured the election of Abdullah Gul as
president. The AKP government embarked on plans for a new constitution
to replace that put in place under the military regime in 1982.
Human Rights Defenders The criminalization of speech remains a key
obstacle to the protection of human rights in Turkey, contributing
to an atmosphere of intolerance that assumed violent proportions in
2007. On January 19 the journalist and human rights defender Hrant
Dink was shot dead outside his office. Dink came to public notoriety
because he was repeatedly prosecuted for speech-related crimes and,
in 2006, convicted for "publicly insulting Turkishness" under article
301 of the penal code. The trial of 12 suspects indicted for Dink’s
murder, among them the 17-year-old gunman, began on July 2, but the
authorities have to date failed to act on significant evidence of
negligence or possible collusion by the security forces.
Other public figures associated with human rights advocacy also
received death threats. Burdensome registration procedures and
legal restrictions on associations continued. The LGBT organization
Lambdaistanbul, for example, was prosecuted for having aims that were
against "law and morality" and faced possible closure.
Freedom of Expression and Assembly After its electoral victory
in July, the new AKP government failed to take immediate steps
to restart the stalled reform process by lifting restrictions on
freedom of expression such as article 301, and elements of the legal
establishment opposed to reform continued to prosecute and convict
individuals for speech-related offences, as well as for staging
unauthorized demonstrations.
Over 2007 hundreds of individuals, among them journalists, writers,
publishers, academics, human rights defenders, and, above all,
officials of Kurdish political parties and associations, were
prosecuted. Some were convicted.
In October 2007 Arat Dink, son of Hrant Dink and editor of the
bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos (Furrow), and the newspaper’s
owner Serkis Sarkopyan were given one-year suspended sentences for
"insulting Turkishness" under article 301. They had reported a July
2006 Reuters interview with Hrant Dink in which he had referred to the
"Armenian genocide." No other newspaper that reported Hrant Dink’s
words to Reuters has been prosecuted.
Officials of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP)-which
stood independent in the election and gained 22 seats-were repeatedly
convicted for speech-related offences during the year. Some were
detained for several months pending trial. The number of prosecutions
was significantly higher than in previous years, lending credence
to suggestions that concerted efforts were being made to block
their political activity and restrict their freedom of assembly in
an election year. In November the closure of the DTP was pending
before the Constitutional Court. Officials of the Kurdish party
HAK-PAR were also sentenced for using the Kurdish language in their
political party activities; a Constitutional Court closure case is
still pending against the party.
Torture, Ill-Treatment, and Killings by Security Forces Ill-treatment
appeared to be on the rise in 2007 and was regularly reported as
occurring during arrest, outside places of official detention, and in
the context of demonstrations, as well as in detention centers. This
trend was further exacerbated by the passing in June of a new police
law granting wide-ranging powers of stop and search. After the new
law came into force, cases of police brutality were also reported
in the context of the routine identity checks permitted in the new
law. There were continuing reports of ill-treatment in prisons and,
in January, conscientious objector Halil Savda was ill-treated at
the Tekirdað military barracks.
Fatal shootings of civilians by members of the security forces remain
a serious concern. Although police typically state that the killing
occurred because the individual has failed to obey a warning to stop,
in some cases these may amount to extrajudicial executions. The fatal
shooting of Bulent Karataþ near Hozat, Tunceli, in September 2007,
bore the hallmarks of a summary execution. His companion, Rýza Cicek,
who survived serious gunshot wounds, explained how he was shot by
military personnel while on a beekeeping trip. Another suspected
summary execution was that of the villager Ejder Demir, shot dead near
Ozalp, Van, in September. Nigerian asylum seeker Festus Okey died of
gunshot wounds incurred while in police custody in Istanbul in August.
Attacks on Civilians Suspected PKK bomb attacks targeting civilians
have continued at intervals in 2007, including a suicide bombing in
May in the shopping district of Ulus, Ankara, which resulted in eight
deaths, and two bombings in Izmir in October, killing one man. In
September a minibus was fired upon near a village in Beytuþþebap,
Þýrnak province, killing five civilians and seven village guards. As
of this writing, the perpetrators had not been identified.
Impunity Turkish courts are notoriously lenient towards members
of the security forces who are charged with abuse or misconduct,
contributing to impunity and the persistence of torture and the resort
to lethal force. Many allegations of torture or killings in disputed
circumstances never reach the courts and are not investigated. Some
controversial court rulings in the first half of 2007 stand out.
In May the Court of Cassation quashed the 39-year sentences of two
gendarmerie intelligence officers for the November 2005 bombing of
a bookshop in the southeastern town of Þemdinli that resulted in
one death. This bombing was widely condemned by human rights groups
in Turkey as evidence of a resort to lawlessness in the name of
counterterrorism. Controversially the court ruled that the crime had
been committed in the course of a counterterrorism operation and that
the defendants should be retried in a military court. The decision
is on appeal.
In April a court in Eskiþehir acquitted four police officers for the
killing of Ahmet and Uður Kaymaz, in November 2004 in the southeast
town of Kýzýltepe. The court ignored substantial forensic evidence
demonstrating that the father and son may have been the victims of
a summary execution. The case is on appeal.
There was no progress in the investigation into the widespread
allegations of police torture following arrests during violent protests
in March 2006 in Diyarbakýr, into the deaths of 10 demonstrators
(eight shot dead) during the protests.
Key International Actors The European Union (EU) remained the most
important international actor in fostering respect for human rights
in Turkey. However, the December 2006 EU summit decision to partially
freeze membership negotiations because of Turkey’s relations with
Cyprus contributed to the perception in Turkey that EU member states
were reneging on their commitment to Turkey’s candidacy.
After the election in France of President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007,
who has repeatedly stated his opposition to Turkey joining the EU,
in June France used its veto power to block two minor chapters of
the accession negotiations. In its annual progress report, published
in November, the European Commission commented on the failure to
advance reforms in 2007, continuing restrictions on free speech,
the interference of the military in political affairs, the need to
strengthen the independence of the judiciary, and the failure to
further minority rights.
As of this writing, the European Court of Human Rights has issued
242 judgments against Turkey in 2007 for torture, unfair trial,
extrajudicial execution, and other violations. In an October judgment
that may have implications for the draft constitution, the court
found that the failure to grant an Alevi schoolgirl exemption from
constitutionally enshrined compulsory religious education classes
focused on Sunni Islam constituted a violation of the right to
education (Hasan and Eylem Zengin v. Turkey).
In a controversial decision in January the court ruled that the
existence of the 10 percent electoral threshold, which has been
argued to deprive in particular pro-Kurdish parties of political
representation in parliament, did not violate the right of the people
to freely express their opinion of the choice of the legislature
(article 3 of protocol 1 of the convention). Two judges dissented,
pointing to the fact that the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council
of Europe had in 2004 urged Turkey to lower the threshold, and that
the threshold was twice as high as the European average (see Yumuk
and Sadak v. Turkey). In November the case was heard by the Grand
Chamber of the European Court and judgment is awaited. (HRW/AG)
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