TURKEY HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES, 1993

[newsdesk_aps_nl at apsf.aps.nl]

From: newsdesk_aps_nl at apsf.aps.nl (newsdesk at aps.nl)
Subject: TURKEY HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES, 1993   PART 2


TURKEY HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES, 1993   part 2

Source:  U.S.  Department of State


From: kendal at nucst9.neep.wisc.edu (Kendal)
Date: 4 Feb 1994 21:44:44 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison; College of Engineering

Human rights groups and parliamentarians continued to accuse

Turkish security forces of carrying out extrajudicial killings
during raids on alleged terrorist safe houses rather than
trying to arrest the occupants.  During the first 9 months of
the year, more than 40 people died in house raids, according to
human rights groups.  They noted that, while the authorities
announced that the suspects were killed in shootouts,
eyewitnesses often reported that no shots were fired by the
suspects.  Significantly, security forces are rarely killed or
injured in the raids.  Local human rights groups cited, for
example a March 24 raid on an alleged Dev Sol (Devrimci Sol or
the Revolutionary Left, a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group)
safe house in Istanbul, in which police killed three suspects,
and an April 23 shoot-out with alleged Dev Sol terrorists in
Tunceli province, where security forces killed 12; A deputy of
the Socialist Democratic Populist Party (SHP) claimed 6 of the
dead were killed after they had surrendered.

Security forces also continued to be charged with using deadly
force against unarmed civilians participating in peaceful
demonstrations.  In two separate incidents (in Kars and Mus
provinces, respectively) during the weekend of August 14-15,
Turkish security forces took allegedly defensive actions that
resulted in the deaths of at least 18 civilians and
demonstrators, with no security force casualties.

During the year, a trend was reported in the southeast in which
Turkish forces, after being attacked by the PKK, retaliated
against the closest village or town, terrorizing or even
killing civilians and destroying property and livestock.

On October 23, after the PKK apparently killed a Jandarma
brigadier general in Lice, the provincial governor sealed off
the town and surrounding area, and the Jandarma reportedly
retaliated against the village, killing civilians and carrying
out wholesale property destruction.  Human rights organizations
estimate that 30 civilians were killed; the official government
figure is 13.  Human rights monitors, journalists, and the
chairman of the Republican People's Party (CHP) were denied
access to Lice in the days that followed, and telephone
communications with the town were cut on October 23.  On
October 25, the Diyarbakir HRA reported that 28 wounded persons
had been evacuated.  Much temporary housing, put in place after
an earthquake and not yet replaced with permanent housing, was
destroyed.

Another credible allegation of extrajudicial killing concerns
six villagers from Ozbasoglu reportedly shot by security forces
on July 2.  Five died, but the sixth survived and gave his
account of the incident to a Member of Parliament (M.P.) who
submitted a complaint to the Human Rights Commission of the
Turkish Grand National Assembly.  As of the end of the year,
there has been no response.

The number of "mystery killings" increased during 1993, with
more than 291 civilians assassinated during the first 9 months
of the year.  The Turkish Human Rights Association (HRA)
claimed that 524 people were killed in 1993 by unidentified
attackers mostly in the east and southeast of the country.  The
majority were leaders or prominent members of the Kurdish
community, including journalists, physicians, human rights
activists, local politicians, members of the People's Labor
Party (HEP) and its successor, the Democracy Party (DEP), and
others viewed as sympathetic to Kurdish causes.  Some human
rights organizations, religious leaders, Kurdish leaders, and
local Kurds asserted that the Government acquiesces in, or even
carries out, the murders of civilians.  They cited frequent
failures of officials to investigate these murders, the fact
that some victims' bodies were discovered in "security zones"
to which only Jandarma or security officials are permitted
access, and the fact that some victims had previously been
detained, abused, or threatened by security forces.  Human
rights groups reported the widespread belief that at least some
"mystery killings" are carried out by a counterguerrilla group
associated with the security forces.

On September 4, unknown persons fatally shot Mehmet Sincar, a
DEP M.P. from Mardin, and Metin Ozdemir, the local DEP
chairman, in the city center of Batman, wounded four others,
including DEP M.P. Nizamettin Toguc, and escaped.  Other DEP
M.P.'s who were in Batman at the time of the killing reported
that they were given police security the day before the
killing, but the police security presence disappeared on the
morning of the murder.  The Government pledged to bring
Sincar's assassin to justice and immediately arrested a score
of suspects, most of whom were eventually released.  A case was
opened against seven suspects alleged to have assisted in the
assassination, but at the end of the year no one had been
charged with the murder itself.  In the past 2 years, at least
54 members of the DEP and its predecessor, the HEP, have been
assassinated.  Amnesty International (AI) states that it has
received persistent and credible reports of members of security
forces threatening to kill Kurdish activists.

Other mystery killings included Elazig HRA chairman and
attorney Metin Can and Dr. Hasan Kaya, whose bodies were found
in eastern Tunceli province on February 27 with their hands
tied behind their backs and each with a bullet hole in his
head.  Family and HEP members accused government officials of
failing to search for the victims once their disappearance had
been reported.  Kemel Kilic, the Urfa representative for the
pro-Kurdish daily Ozgur Gundem (Free Agenda) and a founding
member of the Urfa branch of the HRA was shot dead on his way
home from work.  On the day of his death, Kilic had organized a
press conference in which he denounced the attempts to stop
distribution of Ozgur Gundem and the "police's silence."  The
body of Ferhat Tepe, 19-year-old Bitlis correspondent for Ozgur
Gundem, was identified on August 9 in the Elazig state hospital
morgue.  Reportedly, an anonymous caller told his family after
his disappearance on July 28 that the so-called Ottoman Turkish
Revenge Brigade had kidnaped him.  Ozgur Gundem and the leftist
daily Aydinlik produced witnesses who claimed Tepe had been
tortured to death in the Diyarbakir provincial Jandarma
interrogation center.  The Government expressed its condolences
on Tepe's death but took no action; it considers Tepe's death a
mystery murder.