TURKEY HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES, 1993

[kurdeng at aps.nl]

Subject: TURKEY HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES, 1993 PART 3


TURKEY HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES, 1993   part 3

Source:  U.S.  Department of State

From: kendal at nucst9.neep.wisc.edu (Kendal)
Date: 4 Feb 1994 21:45:23 GMT
Distribution: world


In all, five journalists were assassinated in 1993.  On January
24 prominent journalist and secularist Ugur Mumcu was killed by
a bomb that had been placed under his car.  Three different
Islamic groups claimed responsibility for his killing.  By
year's end, none of these murders had been solved.

On September 21 Ali Sahap Samk, a teacher in Diyarbakir and
member of the leftist teachers' union, Egit Sen, was shot and
killed by unidentified persons outside his home.  The
Diyarbakir leader of the labor union blamed security forces for
the murder.

In most cases, the Government failed to initiate any public
inquiry or to press charges in connection with these murders.
In September the regional governor for the southeast asserted
that 200 mystery murders which occurred in the region between
July 1991 and July 1992 had been solved.   To date none of the
cases has been prosecuted, and no evidence has been proferred
to back up his claim.  In May the press reported that the then
Interior minister downplayed the 1992 murders of 15 journalists
by claiming that only 4 of the 15 murdered journalists were
"real" journalists, and the others were killed as a result of
clashes between rival factions in the southeast.

A delegation of the International Federation of Journalists
visited Turkey in March to investigate the increasing number of
unsolved murder cases in the southeast; the head of the
delegation said PEN believes that Turkey, where 15 journalists
had been murdered over the last 15 months, posed a major danger
to reporters.

A parliamentary committee investigated the mystery murders in
1993 but had issued no report by year's end.  In early March,
an SHP delegation submitted its report to the Ministry of
Justice and suggested assigning a team of public prosecutors to
Silvan, Batman, Nusaybin, Kiziltepe, and Midyat to investigate
the mysterious murders.  The report said local people had lost
their confidence in the current prosecutors and other officials
who have been unable to solve the murders so far.  As of the
end of 1993, the Justice Ministry had issued no public response.

Political murders carried out by terrorists occurred
predominantly in southeast Anatolia.  Victims of killings
almost certainly perpetrated by the PKK included state
officials (Jandarma, local mayors, and schoolteachers),
paramilitary village guards (and family members), and persons
suspected of supporting rightwing terrorist groups.  According
to Milliyet, a mainstream newspaper, in the period between June
1992 and June 1993, unidentified assailants murdered 20
teachers in the southeastern province of Diyarbakir alone.  In
early January, a group of alleged PKK militants stabbed to
death Halis Sisman, an elementary schoolteacher in Yassica
village, Bitlis.  On September 21, unidentified persons shot
and killed primary schoolteacher Ahmet Arcagok in Diyarbakir.
Other victims were found with Turkish lira notes stuffed in
their mouths, a signal that the person killed was thought to be
a government collaborator.

On May 24 the PKK attacked a number of buses killing 33 unarmed
recruits in civilian clothing, thus ending the PKK's unilateral
spring cease-fire.  In that action, as many as 150 PKK members
blocked the Bingol-Elazig highway, stopped buses, pulled the
recruits from the buses, and executed them.  The PKK also
targeted state-paid village guards.  On August 4, for example,
the PKK raided a radio relay station near Yuksekova in Hakkari
province, killing eight soldiers and two village guards.

Religious officials also were political murder victims.  PKK
militants on May 4 reportedly kidnaped Abdulselam Eran, imam of
Baloglu village, Kulp, from his home in Comlekci hamlet, and
his body was found near the village a week later.  There were
incidents of religious violence; the worst occurred in Sivas on
July 2 when a crowd of Islamic fundamentalists set fire to a
hotel, killing 37 people.  The purported target of their ire
was well-known author and humorist Aziz Nesin, the translator
of Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses."  Nesin escaped, but
37 people perished, and approximately 100 were injured.  The
crowd also toppled statues of Ataturk and martyred Alawi poet
Abdal Pir Sultan.  Many criticized the city government and
police for failing to take adequate security measures in a
timely manner, despite prior evidence of the potential for such
violence.

Dev Sol, a violent Marxist-Leninist group, though substantially
weakened by police actions against it in 1991 and 1992,
resurfaced in August and September, claiming responsibility for
several shootings, including the August 25 assassination of
Recep Silo, an analyst with the Turkish National Intelligence
Organization, as he watched a soccer game at his neighborhood
field.

     b.  Disappearance

Disappearances continued to occur in 1993, while, with one
exception, those reported in 1992 and earlier remained
unsolved.  Some disappeared after witnesses reported they had
been taken into custody by security forces.  In some of these
cases, the person's body was later discovered, as happened in
the disappearance of Ferhat Tepe (see Section 1.a.).  Ayse
Malkac, a correspondent working in Ozgur Gundem's Istanbul
bureau, disappeared midmorning on August 7 after leaving her
office and has not been seen since.  Eyewitnesses claimed to
have seen her being detained in the street by plainclothes
police officers, but local authorities denied taking Malkac
into custody.  Human rights groups, journalists, and others
alleged the complicity of security forces in this and other
disappearances.

PKK terrorists continued their frequent abductions of local
villagers, teachers, religious figures, and officials in the
southeast, many of whose bodies were later discovered.  The PKK
expanded its kidnaping activities to include foreign tourists.
Several Western tourists were kidnaped during the summer but
eventually released unharmed, after periods of captivity
ranging from 2 to 5 weeks.

     c.  Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading
         Treatment or Punishment

Despite the Constitution's ban on torture, Turkey's accession
to the U.N. and European Conventions Against Torture, and the
public pledges of successive governments to do away with
torture, the practice continued.  Human rights attorneys and
physicians who treat victims of torture state that most persons
charged with, or merely suspected of, political crimes suffer
torture, usually during periods of incommunicado detention in
police stations and Jandarma headquarters before they are
brought before a court.

Anecdotal evidence suggested that the implementation of the
CMUK facilitated more immediate attorney access to those
arrested for common crimes.  However, human rights groups have
not yet ascertained a related decrease in allegations of
torture.  The U.S.-based Helsinki Watch advised that its
reports indicated that torture continued to be used in police
interrogation centers against about half of ordinary criminal
suspects.  CMUK does not apply to those detained under the
Anti-Terror Law.  The HRF reported that there was no indication
either of the amelioration of treatment of those charged under
the Anti-Terror Law or of an overall decrease in the incidence
of torture in 1993.

Human rights observers report that the system whereby the
arresting police officer is also responsible for interrogating
the suspect is conducive to torture because the officer seeks
to obtain a confession that would justify the arrest.
According to those familiar with Turkish police operations, in
petty criminal cases, the arresting officer is responsible for
following up on the case, whereas in major cases such as murder
and political or terrorism-related crimes, "desks" responsible
for the area in question are responsible for the interrogation.

Credible reports from former detainees and professionals who
rehabilitate victims state that commonly employed methods of
torture include:  high-pressure cold water hoses, electric
shocks, beating of the genitalia, hanging by the arms,
blindfolding, sleep deprivation, deprivation of clothing,
systematic beatings, and vaginal and anal rape with truncheons
and, in some instances, gun barrels.  HRA offices have also
reported the use by police of tiny cells in which detainees are
incarcerated for periods up to 10 hours to coerce confessions.
Within the last 2 months of 1993, the HRF received three
reports from former detainees who say they have been taken to a
deserted construction site and tortured there.

Nilufer Koc, an interpreter who has lived in Germany for the
past 20 years, was detained in Sirnak province while
accompanying a German delegation in Turkey.  She claimed that
her torture included being hung by handcuffs from a hook for 2
hours, repeatedly hosed with cold water while naked, beaten,
grabbed by the hair and having her head hit against the wall,
and a weapon held against her forehead and told to make a last
wish.  Security forces believed her to be involved in PKK
activities and wanted information about the activities of the
PKK in Germany.  After her release, Koc returned to Germany.
The Turkish Government denied there was a problem.

Although the Government asserted that medical examinations
occur once during detention and a second time before either
arraignment or release, former detainees asserted that some
medical examinations took place too long after the event to
allow any definitive findings, some examinations were cursory,
and some were done in the presence of police officials.
Human rights groups reported that some doctors were
occasionally under pressure to submit false or misleading
medical certificates, denying evidence of torture.  According
to the HRF, practice varies widely; in some cases proper
examinations are conducted, and in others doctors sign off on
papers handed to them.

Authorities do not consistently investigate allegations of such
abuses, and perpetrators are rarely sanctioned.  Credible
sources in the human rights and legal communities estimate that
judicial authorities investigate only about one-half of the
formal complaints involving torture and prosecute only a small
fraction of those.  Lawyers report harassment and threats for
taking on torture cases, for example, anonymous telephone calls
threatening they will suffer the same fate as Metin Can (see
Section 1.a.).

In one case, however, five policemen charged in a 1986 torture
case which occurred in the Sebin Karahisar township of Giresun
on the Black Sea coast were sentenced by the Giresun criminal
court to terms ranging from 10 months to 6 years and 8 months.
Two officers were acquitted.  The Court of Appeals upheld the
sentences, leaving the convicted policemen no further legal
recourse.


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