02:ABD DI$i$leri BakanlIGI'nIn, TR'

[newsdesk_aps_nl at apsf.aps.nl]

From: newsdesk_aps_nl at apsf.aps.nl (newsdesk at aps.nl)
Subject: 02:ABD DI$i$leri BakanlIGI'nIn, TR'de Insan HaklarI Raporu, 2


The Constitution provides for the inviolability of a person's
domicile and the privacy of correspondence and communication.
Government officials may enter a private residence or intercept
or monitor private correspondence only upon issuance of a
judicial warrant.  These provisions are generally respected in
practice outside the state of emergency region.

A judge must decide whether to issue a search warrant for a
residence.  If delay may cause harm, prosecutors and municipal
officers authorized to carry out prosecutors' instructions may
conduct a search.  Searches of private premises may not be
carried out at night, unless the delay will be damaging or the
search will result in the capture of a prisoner at large.
Exceptions include persons under special observation by the
Security Directorate General, places anyone can enter at night,
places where criminals gather, places where materials obtained
through the Commission of Crimes are kept, gambling
establishments, and brothels.  In the 10 provinces under
emergency rule, the Regional Governor can and does empower
security authorities to search without a warrant residences or
the premises of political parties, businesses, associations, or
other organizations.  According to the HRF, the practice of
security authorities in these provinces to search, hold, or
seize without warrant persons, letters, telegrams, and
documents is unconstitutional.  Roadblocks are commonplace in
the southeast, and security officials regularly search vehicles
and travelers.

Security forces have compelled the evacuation of villages in
the southeast to prevent villagers from giving aid and comfort
to the PKK (see Section 1.g.).  The Government admits to
village and hamlet evacuations but claims they occur as the
consequence of pressures by and fear of the PKK and because
security operations against the PKK in the region make
continued occupancy unsafe.

g.  Use of Excessive Force and Violations of Humanitarian Law in Internal
    Conflicts

Since 1984 the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has
waged an increasingly violent terrorist insurgency that has
claimed over 15,000 lives, as many as 2,000 of them during
1994.  The PKK's campaign of violence in southeast Turkey is
directed against both security forces and civilians, most of
whom are Kurds, whom the PKK accuses of cooperating with the
State.  The TNP, Jandarma, and armed forces, in turn, have
waged an increasingly intense campaign to suppress terrorism,
targeting active PKK units as well as those they believe
support or sympathize with the PKK, and committing many human
rights abuses in the process.  According to government figures,
in the first 10 months of 1994, 3,577 PKK, 963 security force
members and 940 noncombatants were killed.  In that same
period, 1,563 civilians, 2,308 security force members and 137
PKK were wounded.

Government security forces forcibly evacuated and sometimes
burned villages, for the purpose of preventing their
inhabitants from providing aid and comfort to PKK guerrillas or
in retaliation for a PKK raid on a nearby Jandarma post.  Some
villagers who migrated to the cities told reliable sources that
they had been evacuated for refusing to participate in the
paramilitary village guard system.  Some lost all their
belongings when their houses were burned.

In May the Interior Minister, replying to a question in
Parliament, stated that 871 villages and hamlets in the state
of emergency region had become empty since July 1987.  The
Interior Minister asserted that the villages and hamlets were
emptied because of PKK pressure or economic reasons.  The
Minister of Defense that same month stated that to control PKK
activity in the region, 50 settlement centers, displacing
approximately 10,000 persons around Mount Ararat and Tenduruk
Mountain, would be evacuated and that those regions would be
declared a military zone.  These statements were the first
official confirmations of village evacuations in the southeast,
including evacuations at government behest.  In October, 17
village evacuations in Tunceli Province finally brought the
issue into the national spotlight.  According to government
figures, as of October 1, 1,046 villages and hamlets had been
evacuated:  75 by the regional governorship for security
reasons; 125 of the residents' own accord for security reasons;
812 because of PKK pressure; and 34 for economic reasons.
According to a government report, to date approximately
$227,000 in compensation has been paid to villagers displaced
in the southeast, largely as a result of PKK activity, and
$545,000 was to be spent in 1994 to construct housing for
displaced villagers in Sirnak and Bingol provinces. The
Government has stated that it is providing housing and
financial assistance to those displaced in Tunceli Province.

On March 26, a Turkish air force plane bombed up to four
villages in Sirnak province, killing approximately 20 persons,
according to press reports.  Journalists were not allowed into
the area.  The Government stated that the inhabitants had left
the villages some time before and that the PKK had then moved
in, along with some civilians.  When the PKK was hit, the
Government explained, there was perforce some collateral
damage.

During the first 6 months of 1994, approximately 10,000 Turks
of Kurdish ethnic origin left the southeast for northern Iraq,
claiming the Government had forced them out.  The Government
believes the villagers moved to northern Iraq at the behest of
the PKK and views most of them as PKK supporters.

The Government organizes, arms, and pays for a civil defense
force in the southeast known as the village guards.
Participation in the paramilitary militia by local villagers is
theoretically voluntary, but villagers are caught between the
two sides.  If the villagers agree to serve, the PKK may target
them and their village.  If the villagers refuse to
participate, government security forces may retaliate against
them and their village.  The village guards have a reputation
for being the least disciplined of the Government's security forces.

There were instances in which physicians were prosecuted for
giving medical care to alleged PKK terrorists, a practice that
could deter other physicians from extending such aid.  For
example, Dr. Ilhan Diken was tried in Diyarbakir State Security
Court for treating a wounded PKK militant, an offense for which
the prosecution demanded a 5-year sentence.  Diken's sentence
of 3 years 9 months, of which he will serve 33 months, was
affirmed by the Court of Appeals.

Government state of emergency decree 430, codified in 1990 and
most recently renewed in November, imposes stringent security
measures in the southeast.  The regional governor may censor
news, ban strikes or lockouts, and impose internal exile (see
Section 1.d.).  The decree also provides for doubling the
sentences of those convicted of cooperating with separatists.
Informants and convicted persons who cooperate with the State
are eligible for rewards and reduced sentences.  Provisions in
the decree that specifically prohibited court challenges to the
regional governor's administrative decisions were amended in
1992 to permit limited judicial review.

The year 1994 witnessed a series of PKK attacks on Turkish
petroleum wells and power transformers, temporarily halting oil
production.  In August post and telecommunications (PTT)
publications revealed that the PKK had caused $2 million in
damage to the domestic PTT network in the Southeast and its
radio link stations in Hakkari, Diyarbakir, Igdir, Mus, and
Agri Provinces.

For the 1993-94 school year, according to the Education
Minister, 4,000 schools were closed in eastern and southeastern
Turkey.  Alternate government figures indicate that 3,395
schools were closed during that period:  1,839 due to lack of
security and fear of terrorism, 2,202 for lack of teachers, 89
for insufficient students, 92 because of the migration or
evacuation of residents from the area, and 213 because they had
been attacked and burned.  In Tunceli province alone, 12
teachers were killed and 273 of 314 schools remained closed
throughout the 1993-94 school year.  Although the Government
opened more regional boarding schools, promised to reopen
closed schools for the 1994-95 school year, and maintains that
a supplementary TL 1876 billion ($5,340,000) allocation was
made to schools in the region, the Education Minister in
September announced that 4,000 schools in the southeast were
closed due to village evacuations undertaken for security and
other reasons.

Villagers and human rights groups complained that Jandarma
actions and security forces' searches for PKK terrorists and
their supporters resulted in expulsions, beatings, torture, and
the arbitrary killing of innocent civilians.  Government
security forces on many occasions fired on the homes of
villagers suspected of harboring PKK terrorists, causing an
unknown number of casualties and destroying villagers'
property, including livestock.