TURKEY: Prisoners Of Conscience Lined Up For Jail Terms

Mon Oct 27 06:36:15 GMT 1997

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Title: TURKEY: Prisoners Of Conscience Lined Up For Jail Terms

By Nadire Mater

ISTANBUL, Oct 23 (IPS) - ''It is all very clear. I am going to
prison,'' said coolheaded prisoner of conscience Esber
Yagmurdereli, on his way to start a 23 year jail sentence this
week.

The veteran peace campaigner, blind since the age of 11, had been
sentenced to ten months in jail earlier this year for comments
made during a speech in 1991. At that time he had just been
paroled after serving 13 years of a 33 year sentence; the second
offence reactivates the 23 year term still legally outstanding.

Yagmurdereli, 53, was finally rearrested as he left the national
Kanal D radio studios after joining a talk show on 'freedom of
conscience'. He was transferred Wednesday to Cankiri high security
prison, 600 kilometres to the east of Istanbul.

The day before fellow rights activist Akin Birdal, chairman of
the country's leading Human Rights Association (IHD) was sentenced
to a year in prison for allegedly ''inciting hatred and division'' --
placing him at risk of arrest and jail, a day before a scheduled
appointment with the country's justice minister.

The day before that, several hundred miles away, Yagmurdereli's
fellow peace campaigner, veteran Turkish novelist Yasar Kemal was
being honoured with a peace prize from German president Richard
von Weizsacker.

''Turkey is an inconceivable country,'' Kemal told the Frankfurt
audience. ''Is it a dictatorship or a democracy? I am still unable
to guess.''

The German government condemned Yagmurdereli's arrest. ''This is
a negative step regarding the degree of freedom of expression and
tolerance in Turkey,'' said German foreign ministry deputy
spokesman Marcus Ederer. Yagmurdereli's plight was also due to be
raised as am 'urgent issue' at the European Parliament, Thursday.

''Turkey knows that the route to Europe only follows a
significant improvement in the human rights situation there,''
said German foreign minister Klaus Kinkel. ''Without the basic
right to express one's opinion, the path remains barred.''

Even members of the Turkish government appealed for clemency.

''His imprisonment, not only for humanitarian reasons but also
for juridical reasons will tarnish Turkey's reputation
internationally,'' said minister of state Husamettin Cindoruk,
leader of the Democratic Turkey Party. ''Immediate amendments in
the procedures law should be implemented.''

The charges are all related to the Turkish state's relentless
efforts to jail or silence critics of its bloody war in the
country's south east. The 13 year war against the guerrillas of
the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has claimed more than 27,000
lives and displaced more than a million civilians.

Kemal has vowed to leave Turkey ''if they jail Esber,'' who has
been detained under special orders by minister of justice Oltan
Sungurlu.

''The minister says there is no chance of Yagmurdereli's release
in the near future,'' said Birdal, who met Sungurlu a day after
his own hearing in court sentenced him to a year in jail.

Sungurlu denied charges that Yagmurdereli was being held as far
away from the domestic and international eye as possible. ''He may
be transferred to any prison he wishes,'' he reportedly told
Birdal.

Kemal and Yagmurdereli joined hands in 1996 in a bid to halt a
protest hunger strike that led to the deaths of 12 political
prisoners. He was also well known for his part in organising the
'Million Signatures For Peace' petition earlier this year.

Yagmurdereli was sentenced to 36 years in jail in 1978 for
allegedly leading a clandestine armed leftist group, accused of
organising bank robberies, arson and sabotage. Under special
orders from the ministry of justice he spent his first nine years
in solitary confinement.

''More than 1,000 letters sent to me during those nine years
remained under my pillow, until when I was allowed to contact
other prisoners who would read them for me,'' Yagmurdereli
recalls.

''During all those years I did not know what had happened in the
outside world at home and overseas. The only thing I could do was
to rely on my own self and use my memory in the most efficient
way.''

Trained in music and literature in special schools Yagmurdereli
composed musical works, poems and wrote plays in prison. His play,
Scorpion, was scheduled to be staged next month. ''I regret I will
be absent from the first night,'' Yagmurdereli told journalists as
he was taken to prison.

''I realised that my cell was full of scorpions when one day a
guard killed one of them,'' he recalled. ''I visited the prison
doctor and complained. He replied: 'I have been here three years
and no one has complained before. So the scorpions must be
harmless'.''

Yagmurdereli's only son, Ugur, was born two months after his
father's arrest, and he was only allowed to touch his face nine
years later.

''Press freedom equals democracy,'' said prime minister Mesut
Yilmaz Tuesday. ''Turkey will stride toward democracy with respect
to human rights and press freedom.'' Figures show that Turkey is
striding backwards, slowly: the number of prisoners of conscience,
jailed authors and writers, in Turkey rose to 150 in the first
half of 1996 from 121 in 1995 and 100 in 1994.

The prisoners include Kurdish parliamentarians Leyla Zana and
Hatip Dicle and sociologist Ismail Besikci. Besikci, 53, doyen of
Turkey's ''criminals of conscience'' is serving his 15th year in
prison. He has served several jail terms for his views on the
Kurdish separatist question.

His latest stint began in 1991. Already condemned to a total of
100 years in jail, Besikci is threatened with another 104
additional years for other cases pending against him in the State
Security courts.

Yagmurdereli also refuses to accept special privileges and has
formally stated that he will not accept a pardon on the grounds of
either ill health or his disability. (END/IPS/NM/RJ/97)

Origin: Amsterdam/TURKEY/
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