76
Concerns in Europe: January - June 2001
AI Index: EUR 01/003/2001
Amnesty International September 2001
ended in acquittal. Unless the fourth trial and any
related proceedings are concluded before mid- 2003,
there is a risk that the case will be closed, in
accordance with the applicable statute of limitations
which is seven and a half years. Earlier proceedings
had been delayed by the inability of the court to locate
the accused officers, who were still on active duty in
other towns. Some of the victims reportedly suffer
gravely from the effects of the torture they endured.
In December 2000 Turkish parliament adopted a
so-called "amnesty" law (see below) which allows for
the suspension of investigations and trials on ill-
treatment. AI has documented that prosecutions for
torture are rare and when convictions are secured they
are usually for crimes classified as "ill-treatment."
Under the "amnesty" law any security force members
imprisoned following conviction of ill-treatment
committed before 23 April 1999 are to be released and
all trials and investigations in relation to charges of ill-
treatment are being suspended for five years.
Two HADEP politicians "disappeared"
During the first half of 2001 AI frequently had to
appeal to the Turkish authorities because of
unacknowledged detentions which carry the risk of
"disappearance". Two representatives of HADEP,
Serdar Tan
and Ebubekir Deniz, still remain
missing since 25 January when they were called to
visit the gendarmerie station in Silopi in the
southeastern province of
rnak. Although witnesses
reported seeing them go into the gendarmerie building
the authorities at first claimed that the two politicians
had not been detained. Later they admitted that the
men had called at the gendarmerie "for half an hour",
but said they had been released. Subsequently, family
members were given reassurances that the men were
still alive. In early March the authorities announced
that a letter had been confiscated which indicated that
the men had been abducted by the PKK and were held
in a camp in Northern Iraq. The authenticity of this
letter is doubtful and it is difficult to understand how
the PKK could have abducted the men and brought
them across the border immediately after they visited
the gendarmerie. Before their "disappearance" Serdar
Tan
, HADEP head in the district of Silopi, had
repeatedly been threatened and warned to give up his
party activities. This is part of a pattern of repression
on HADEP politicians in
rnak. The provincial head
Resul Sadak and 10 other men were arrested on 23
September 2000 (see AI Index: EUR 01/001/2001).
Mehmet Dilsiz, the HADEP head in the district of
Cizre, was arrested on 1 April. After the
"disappearance" of his party colleagues and while it
was still assumed that they were in gendarmerie
detention he had reportedly received telephone threats
by a man who said he was the "death angel of Serdar
and Ebubekir".
Increased pressure on human rights defenders
Eren Keskin, head of the IHD Istanbul branch had
been part of a delegation who travelled to Silopi to
investigate the "disappearance" of two HADEP
representatives. Immediately afterwards, the governor
of
rnak reportedly said on TV that "This woman
from the IHD came and stirred everything up". After
this, telephone death threats she had been receiving for
a while increased. Osman Baydemir, IHD vice chair
and head of the Diyarbak
r branch, had also received
death threats. Upon AI campaigning the threats
ceased, at least, temporarily.
Hundreds of people who demonstrated against the
F-Type prisons were arrested, in many cases
reportedly with excessive force by the security forces.
The pressure on civil society has increased
enormously. Representatives of human rights
organizations, political parties or trade unions, among
them members of the Union of Employees in Judiciary
and Enforcement Institutions Tüm Yarg
-Sen, who
criticized the F-Type prisons, have been charged with
support of illegal organizations. The branches of IHD
in Gaziantep, Malatya and Bursa have been closed
indefinitely and the branches in Van, Konya and Izmir
were closed temporarily. Other branch offices were
raided and their members temporarily detained.
Several trials were opened in which IHD
representatives have been charged in relation to
protests against the F-Type prisons. On 25 January the
IHD headquarters were raided upon unfounded
allegations that the association had received funding
from the Greek Foreign Ministry. Many documents
were confiscated and subsequently a trial opened in
which the prosecution demands the closure of the
IHD. AI has observed several of these trials and
campaigned on behalf of the human rights defenders.
Freedom of expression remains restricted
(update to AI Index: EUR 01/001/2001)
As a result of Law 4610 on conditional releases and
the postponement of trials and sentences for offences
committed before 23 April 1999, reportedly some
23,000 prisoners were released between 25 December
2000 and March 2001. Among them was the blind
lawyer E
ber Ya
murdereli who had been adopted as
a prisoner of conscience by AI. He was conditionally
released on 18 January. Yet some of the prisoners of
conscience were excluded from this law because they
were sentenced under articles outside the scope of the
law, for example the four former MPs of the
Democracy Party (DEP), which had been banned in
the meantime. Human rights defenders, writers,
politicians, religious leaders, trade unionists and many
others in Turkey continued to be tried and imprisoned
for exercising their right to freedom of expression,
particularly when they expressed opinions on the
Kurdish question, the prisons or the role of Islam.
One of them is Dr Fikret Ba
kaya, the founder
and chairman of the Turkey and Middle East Forum
Foundation. On 1 June 1999, he had published an
article titled "A Question of History?" in the daily
newspaper Özgür Bak
, in which he questioned the
viability of the Turkish state’s approach towards the
Kurdish problem following the arrest of Abdullah
Öcalan. As a result, he was indicted under Article 8/1
of the Anti-Terror Law for "disseminating separatist