Turkey Report - 2002

Head of state: Ahmet Necdet Sezer

Head of government: Bülent Ecevit

Capital: Ankara

Population: 67.6 million

Official language: Turkish

Death penalty: abolitionist in practice

2001 treaty ratifications/signatures: Protocol No. 12 to the European Convention on Human Rights

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Thousands of prisoners were held in conditions of prolonged isolation which could amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, while the debate surrounding the high security ''F-type'' prisons intensified.

The pressure on human rights defenders increased: they faced harassment, death threats, arrests and prosecution, and branches of human rights associations were closed. Many people were imprisoned for exercising their right to freedom of expression, particularly when they expressed opinions on the Kurdish question, the ''F-type'' prisons or the role of Islam.

Torture in police custody remained widespread and was practised systematically, while the perpetrators were rarely brought to justice. Two Kurdish politicians ''disappeared'' in gendarmerie custody. Dozens of political killings were reported, some of which may have been extrajudicial executions. The de facto moratorium on executions was upheld.

Background

In March, Turkey outlined a national program of steps to be taken to meet the conditions set out in December 2000 for starting negotiations to join the European Union. Turkey decided to give priority to a review of the 1982 Constitution, which was adopted when the country was under military rule. While some restrictions on fundamental human rights were lifted, new restrictions were introduced that fell short of Turkey's international obligations. The amendment did not include significant safeguards against torture, and the death penalty was abolished for some offences only. A number of promised legal reforms were initiated. New governmental human rights bodies were established. However, there was no major improvement in the human rights record.

The armed conflict between government forces and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) effectively came to an end in 1999, but there were still some clashes between the Turkish army and PKK groups. Repression of political parties and organizations in the mainly Kurdish southeast continued. Numerous representatives of the legal pro-Kurdish People's Democracy Party (HADEP) were arrested and put on trial. People were restricted from publicly expressing their Kurdish identity. Demonstrations, meetings and other public events were banned, increasingly so following the attacks in the USA on 11 September. Numerous media outlets were closed temporarily. The Islamic-oriented Fazilet Partisi (Virtue Party) was banned in June.

Torture and ill-treatment

Torture was widespread and practised systematically. There were numerous reports of torture and ill-treatment of men, women and children, mainly from western cities, the southeast and the region around Adana in the south. Many of the victims were political activists including supporters of leftist, pro-Kurdish and Islamist groups. Despite intimidation and fear of reprisals, several allegations of torture were made by people arrested on criminal charges. Other alleged victims of torture and ill-treatment included Kurdish villagers, relatives of political activists and trade unionists. Allegations were also received from people alleged to be leading figures in organized crime. Reports indicated that those suspected of theft and burglary - among them many children - continued to be systematically beaten in detention. In some cases torture appeared to be linked to discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation or ethnicity.

Torture and ill-treatment occurred mainly in police and gendarmerie stations during the days immediately after arrest. The most frequently reported methods included severe beatings, blindfolding, suspension by the arms or wrists, electric shocks, sexual abuse, and food and sleep deprivation.

* Eleven villagers who were held by the gendarmerie in the western province of Usak during the night of 23/24 January reported that they were beaten while blindfolded and handcuffed from the moment of their arrest. At the gendarmerie station they were forced to sit on a cold concrete floor, having been stripped of their lower clothing. Two of them also reported that they had been subjected to falaka (beating on the soles of the feet), and that their genitals had been squeezed. The villagers reported that when they were taken to the local state hospital on the morning after their arrest, still blindfolded and handcuffed, the doctors did not examine them properly and did not note their complaints. After their release the men filed formal complaints against the gendarmerie officers and the doctors. The men had been arrested following an anonymous complaint that they had stolen sheep five years earlier.

* An 11-year-old Kurdish girl, Gazal Berü, was attacked by dogs in front of the gendarmerie station in Yigitler village, in the southeastern province of Bingöl, on 19 March and bitten to death. Her sister reported that the soldier standing next to the girls ordered the dogs to ''get them''. Villagers testified that the dogs belonged to the gendarmerie and that there had been repeated but unanswered complaints about them since 1994.

High security prisons

Isolation in prisons continued to be a subject of intense debate. The authorities continued to build 11 ''F-type'' prisons and new wings to existing prisons in which dormitories were replaced with smaller cells. Thousands of inmates of six ''F-type'' prisons already in use were kept in prolonged solitary confinement or small group isolation which could amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Although Article 16 of the Anti-Terror Law was amended in early May to allow prisoners to receive unobstructed visits and to participate in communal activities, the law did not ensure that prisoners spent adequate time in communal areas. AI received numerous reports of ill-treatment in ''F-type'' prisons, but they were difficult to verify because of the restricted access to these prisons. By the end of the year, 42 people had died as a result of a hunger strike against these prisons.

Rape in custody

Reports of rape and sexual assault by members of the security forces continued. During incommunicado detention in police or gendarmerie custody, women and men were routinely stripped naked. Methods of sexual abuse reportedly included rape, electric shocks and beating on the genitals and women's breasts. By the end of 2001, 147 women, 112 of them Kurds, had sought help from a legal aid project in Istanbul set up in 1997 to bring perpetrators to justice. Fifty-one of the women alleged they had been raped; the rest reported other forms of sexual torture. The suspected perpetrators were overwhelmingly police officers, although allegations were also made against gendarmes, soldiers and village guards. Only one was convicted.

* After a demonstration on 1 May,several women were taken to police headquarters in Izmir. Two of them gave similar reports that police officers tried to recruit them as informers. During the night each woman was reportedly taken to a separate room and blindfolded, beaten, stripped naked and sexually abused. Both were reportedly raped by police officers. The women were released the following day without having seen a prosecutor or a judge.

Prolonged police custody

There were increasing numbers of reports about police and gendarmerie detention of political activists in Diyarbakir for several weeks or months, although the maximum permitted in Turkish law was seven days (10 under the state of emergency). Alleged members of the armed Islamist organization Hizbullah, and from October alleged PKK supporters, were returned to custody after having been remanded in prison.

* Tekin Ülsen was taken to the anti-terror branch of the police headquarters in Diyarbakir on 23 June and questioned about alleged links with Hizbullah. While in unacknowledged detention Tekin Ülsen reported that he was tortured with electric shocks, hosed with cold water, had his wrist cut and his testicles squeezed. Despite a judge's order on 19 July that Tekin Ülsen be remanded in prison, he was returned to police headquarters and was finally moved to Diyarbakir prison on 20 July.

Impunity

Officers accused of torture were rarely suspended from duty, and in some cases received promotions. Detainees who alleged that they had been tortured were almost invariably blindfolded. Medical evidence of torture was frequently suppressed. Doctors who documented torture were often harassed. The intimidation of victims and witnesses and a generalized climate of fear also contributed to impunity, as did prosecutors' reluctance to investigate security officials. Statements reportedly extracted under torture were placed in court records and judges often refused to investigate allegations of torture.

* Sait Dönmüs and Mehmet Ali Kaplan were arrested in Diyarbakir on 30 June 2000 on suspicion of supporting the PKK and held at Silvan gendarmerie headquarters for six days before being brought before a prosecutor and released. They were reportedly stripped naked and blindfolded, and were then tortured with electric shocks, beaten and had their testicles squeezed. The following day they were examined at Diyarbakir State Hospital where doctors recorded that their injuries were consistent with torture. After the gendarmes complained about the medical report, the deputy health director attempted to persuade the doctors to change it. When they refused to do this, the gendarmes reportedly destroyed the original report and obtained a substitute which stated that no signs of torture had been found. Following a successful appeal against attempts to prevent prosecution proceedings, the deputy health director was convicted of abuse of his professional role in November 2001, but his sentence was suspended. In a second trial, two gendarmes accused of having tortured Mehmet Ali Kaplan and Sait Dönmüs were acquitted on 27 April 2001. According to the statements of the plaintiffs, the accused were not the officers who had tortured them. The court ruled that the prosecution should reopen the case to identify the perpetrators.

Two HADEP politicians 'disappeared'

* Serdar Tanis and Ebubekir Deniz, both representatives of HADEP, ''disappeared'' after being summoned on 25 January to the gendarmerie station in Silopi, Sirnak province. After initially claiming that the two men had not been detained, the authorities later stated that they had been released after 30 minutes. In March the authorities announced that they had confiscated a letter indicating that the two men had been abducted by the PKK and were being held in a camp in northern Iraq. There were grave doubts about the authenticity of the letter and its account of events. Before his ''disappearance'', Serdar Tanis had been threatened repeatedly by the local gendarmerie commander and warned to give up his party activities.

Increased pressure on human rights defenders

Human rights defenders continued to face harassment and intimidation. On 7 September the authorities raided the Diyarbakir office of the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, one of five treatment and rehabilitation centres for torture victims around the country. Items confiscated and held for a month included all patient files, computers and details of doctors who supported the Foundation. It was suspected that the reason for the raid was the work carried out by the Foundation in preparing documentary evidence of torture.

AI's application to open a branch in Turkey was rejected by the Council of Ministers in November.

Branches of the Human Rights Association (IHD) remained forcibly closed indefinitely and others were closed temporarily. Members of staff were detained for short periods.

* Lawyer and human rights defender Eren Keskin, head of the IHD branch in Istanbul and a founder of the Legal Aid Project for sexually tortured women, went on trial for ''insulting the Turkish army'', after her description of the sexual torture suffered by members of a Kurdish women's group known as the Peace Mothers was published in the newspaper Yeni Gündem (New Agenda). The death threats made against Eren Keskin increased after she travelled to Silopi as part of the delegation investigating the ''disappearance'' of the two HADEP representatives (see above).

Prisoners of conscience

Many people, including writers, journalists, trade unionists, local and national politicians, religious leaders and human rights defenders, continued to be imprisoned or tried for exercising their right to freedom of expression, particularly on issues related to the Kurdish question, the ''F-type'' prisons or the role of Islam. Some of them benefited from a law on conditional releases, but others were excluded.

* Dr Fikret Baskaya, founder and chairman of the Turkey and Middle East Forum Foundation, began a 16-month sentence in Kalecik prison on 29 June. He had been convicted and sentenced under Article 8/1 of the Anti-Terror Act for ''disseminating separatist propaganda through the press''. The conviction followed the publication in June 1999 of an article he wrote in the daily newspaper Özgür Bakis questioning the validity of Turkey's approach on the Kurdish issue following the arrest of Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the PKK.

Death penalty

The de facto moratorium on executions was upheld. However, at least 24 death sentences were passed in 2001; four were later commuted to prison terms. The constitutional amendment on 3 October stated that the death penalty ''cannot be imposed except in times of war, imminent threat of war and for terrorist crimes''. Of the 117 prisoners whose death sentences had been upheld by the Appeal Court and who can be executed upon parliamentary approval, at least 73 were sentenced under ''anti-terror'' legislation.

Political killings

Dozens of killings by security officers were reported; some may have been extrajudicial executions.

* Burhan Koçkar, a HADEP member and municipal police officer in Dogubeyazit in the eastern province of Agri, was shot dead during the night of 31 October by masked special team police officers. They had mistaken his flat for that of his brother Nedim, who was among the 13 HADEP members arrested that night. Burhan Koçkar's relatives and employer rejected claims by the police that he was armed.

Some deliberate and arbitrary killings of dissidents were attributed to armed political groups such as the leftist Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) and the Islamist Hizbullah.

AI country reports/visits

Reports

* Turkey: ''F-type'' prisons - isolation and allegations of torture or ill-treatment (AI Index: EUR 44/025/2001)

* Turkey: The ''Amnesty Law''- an ambiguous step (AI Index: EUR 44/052/2001)

* Turkey: An end to torture and impunity is overdue! (AI Index: EUR 44/072/2001)

Visits

AI delegates visited Turkey in January, May, June and November to research human rights violations. AI trial observers visited in February and March. (NM)