Are we seeing a return to the dirty war waged by the Turkish state against the Kurdish population of Turkey in the 1980s and early 1990s? Certainly the human rights situation in the country has gone sharply backwards since Turkey won a date for the start of EU accession negotiations. SARAH PARKER reports. WHILE the economic situation continues to be very dire for ordinary people, persecution and repression of Kurdish people is increasing alarmingly, suggesting that the reduced tension and lower incidence of torture during the run up to accession negotiations was engineered for cosmeuc reasons.
The Turkish parliament is considering a new anti-terror law that will widen the type of activities deemed supportive of "terrorism". Lawyers believe that human rights advocacy is likely to be criminalised.
A wave of chauvinism has Novelist Orham Pamuk has been prosecuted by Turkish state swept Turkey in the last year. A Christian priest was murdered, attempts by academics to hold conferences on the Armenian genocide have met with hostility and court cases, and Mein Kampf hit the best seller lists.
Novelist Orhan Pamuk was prosecuted for referring to the deaths in the war against the PKK in the same breath as the massacres The Armenians, and only let off on
technicality after big protests in Turkey and internationally.
A year ago people were already worried by the rise in incidents, but months tension has shot up.
First, some members of the sen-secret aren military police units were caught redhanded in an attempt to bomb a bookshop in the town of Semdinli run by a Kurdish activist associated with PKK, laying bare for an instant the face of the "deep state" which lurks just below the surface in
In February Ahmet Turk, leader of the DTP (Democratic Society Party), the current legal pro-Kurdish rights party, reported that he and other DTP leaders including Leyla Zana had received death threats.
In March after peaceful Newroz (New Year) celebrations, days of street-fighting in Diyarbakir (the biggest Kurdish city in the south east) elsewhere took place between youths and police. Police had attacked mourners gathered for the funerals of four of the 14 PKK guerrillas killed, allegedly with poison gas, by the army.
Accusations were made that the disturbances were organised by the PKK, but probably they were a spontaneous expression of fury by young people who feel that almost nothing has been gained by the attempts to negotiate with the Turkish state.
Kurdish politicians and activists are still harassed, use
language and music, eg al weadings or public meetings, is still persecuted, there is no viable process of return to the emptied villages, unemployment and poverty is huge.
In the disturbances fifteen people were killed by the police, several of them children, and hundreds arrested. All those arrested, including the children, were systematically subjected to torture and to inhuman and degrading treatment and that most have medical reports confirming this.
Arrestees including children are lacing various charges, and sentences of up to life. By 19 April the DTP announced that 50 party officials had been arrested.
Three weeks ago Jonathan Sugden, who had Visited Turkey many times, both as an observer for Amnesty International and for Human Rights Watch, was arrested and expelled from Turkey, obviously because the authorities did not like his monitoring activity.
A solidarity campaign has been set up to highlight the case of lawyer Eren Keskin, who has helped many Kurdish women to prosecute police and soldiers for sexual assaults committed during the war, for example when women were under arrest or being expelled from their villages.
She has been prosecuted for
speech she made in Germany in 2002 and is facing prison for refusing to pay the fine.
And campaigners are having to take Germany and Austria to the European Court of Human Rights to stop the next phase of Turkey's attempts to build the Ilisu Dam, drowning the ancient city of Hasankeyf and displacing thousands of Kurdish villagers.
An international appeal calling on the EU to bring pressure to bear to end the DTP leader Leyla Zana has received death threats current wave of persecution abductions, aLICOLS and killings of Kurdish people in Turkey, and for European courts to lvesucate mese incidents, has collected over 700 signatures.
For copies of the appeal contact Peace in Kurdistan at [email protected].
The wal between the Turkish state and the PKK guerrillas, which restarted two years ago, grumbles on. The PKK still says it would like to negotiate a political solution to the conflict, on the basis of recognition of cultural and human rights for the Kurdish people in Turkey, but that failing that it will continue to exercise the right to self-defence.
It is on the defensive, and although it still has wide support, it has no clear perspective that to break the military and political stalemate within
And unfortunately other left and oppositional forces in Turkey are very weak indeed.
The PKK still has a stronghold in Northern Iraq, and in the last couple of years has sent many guerrillas back into Turkey, whence most of them had withdrawn in the period immediately after the abduction in1998 of their leader Ocalan, whose capture was an early example of the now motorous oracuce or renaltion. Ocalan remains in isolation on the prison island of Imrali.
The PKK organisation in Iran has also been very visible in recent months, in response to stepped up repression by central government. But the PKK is now under tremendous pressure in Iraq and Iran as well as in Turkey.
and Iran have Increased _ co-overalon recent years, and Turkey has just moved another 20,000 troops down towards the Iraqi border to join the 220,000 estimated troops already in the south-east, possibly for an invasion of Iraq in pursuit of the PKK guerrillas, and possibly ready to intervene in Kirkuk (see below).