HIrgUr MUstemleke; Sanki Fiyasko Ha

[root at newsdesk.aps.nl]

From: newsdesk at newsdesk.aps.nl (Newsdesk Amsterdam)
Subject: Re: HIrgUr MUstemleke; Sanki Fiyasko Haberler, 9/2/95, 08:00 TSI
Reply-To: root at newsdesk.aps.nl


(1) Turkey challenges legal basis of Amnesty charges

ANKARA, Feb 8 (Reuter) - Turkey, accused by Amnesty International of abusing
human rights, retaliated on Wednesday by charging it with ignoring
international law regarding Kurdish rebels.

In a report in London on Tuesday, the international human rights organisation
accused government forces of daily abuses, including torture, "disappearances"
and extra-judicial executions.

"Never in any of its reports has Amnesty used the term terrorist for the PKK
(Kurdistan Workers Party) which kills women and children and burns villages.
Instead it calls them 'guerrillas'," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ferhat Ataman
said. "There are serious legal errors in Amnesty's approach to human rights."

Ataman said the Geneva Convention, the international document on rules of war,
describes a guerrilla as an armed fighter for the right of self-determination
but that right is denied by the 1993 Vienna declaration in countries where the
government represents the whole of the population, such as Turkey. "It is a
clear violation of law to describe the terrorists of the PKK as guerrillas."

"It was noteworthy that in almost all of the human rights abuses cases Amnesty
cited, the alleged victims were suspects of PKK terrorism," he said. "Turkey
answers to the United Nations for every single accusation put forth by Amnesty.
This obviously satisfies the U.N. system because it has refused to re-open a
case on Turkish human rights which it closed in 1992, despite insistent efforts
by Amnesty."

More than 14,000 people have died in Turkey since 1984 when the PKK launched
its violent struggle for a separate Kurdish state in southeast Turkey.

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