Turkey and human rights Home thoughts from abroad
Even as Turkey preaches human rights to neighbours, its record at home
is patchy
Nov 26th 2011 | *ANKARA *| from the print edition
WITH her intense gaze, washed-out jeans and talk of freedom, Dilsat Aktas
is a typical left-wing activist. In May the 29-year-old climbed onto an
armoured police-carrier in Ankara to protest against the death of another
activist, who had suffered a stroke after being sprayed with pepper gas in
the Black Sea province of Hopa. Ms Aktas now hobbles around on crutches:
the police clubbed her so hard as she tried to escape that they broke her
left hip. `The doctor says it will take three years to fix,’ she says,
dragging on a cigarette.
Her complaints to a local prosecutor were ignored. Omur Cagdas Ersoy, a
fellow student, tried to shield her with his body, only to be flogged in
his turn. Mr Ersoy is now in an Ankara jail, along with 15 fellow students,
facing charges of belonging to an obscure left-wing armed faction that no
longer exists. The evidence against the group includes seized left-wing
tracts and anti-war posters, but not a single weapon. `They did find a
broken umbrella, they took that too,’ says Mr Ersoy’s father, Fatih, with a
bitter laugh.
Huseyin Aygun, a deputy from the opposition Republican People’s Party
(CHP), claims that over 500 students are now in prison for alleged
membership of terrorist groups. Many students were demonstrating against
the ruling Justice and Development (AK) party and for free education and
health care, though some backed neuralgic causes like the right to
conscientious objection and Kurdish-language education. Prosecutors
routinely send universities indictments against students even before they
are read in court. The students are expelled before they are actually
convicted. `The courts are stacked with pro-AK judges and the entire system
is mobilised against any form of dissent,’ says Mr Aygun.
**
The plight of Turkey’s journalists has tended to overshadow that of its
students. Around 76 journalists are now behind bars, more than in China,
many of them for supposed terrorist crimes; another big trial began this
week. Some 47 lawyers have also just been arrested, including some working
for Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ party
(PKK). Once lauded for sweeping reforms, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish
prime minister, is growing ever harsher. He has escalated the army’s war
against the PKK while rounding up sympathisers in the thousands. Hulya
Capar of the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) reckons that at least
3,500 Kurdish activists (including 15 BDP mayors) have been arrested since
2009 for alleged membership of the PKK’s urban arm, known as the `KCK.’
Erected around Turkey’s vaguely worded anti-terror laws these cases can be
patchy and sometimes absurd. Cengiz Dogan, a Kurd who has been sitting in
jail since 2009 for supposed membership of the KCK, was accused in a
separate case of attending a PKK event in April. If this were true `the
same person was in two different places at the same time,’ concludes Ezgi
Basaran, the journalist who exposed the inconsistency. Busra Ersanli, a
constitutional-law professor, was arrested on terror charges last month
after lecturing BDP members on such subversive topics as Basque autonomy.
Idris Naim Sahin, the interior minister, seemed convinced of her guilt when
he said that Ms Ersanli `had shady relatives.’
The West does not seem to notice the steady deterioration in human rights
in Turkey, instead extolling it as a model for the Arab spring. `Europe is
too mired in its own problems and America needs Turkey for regional
security,’ shrugs a European ambassador in Ankara. It will fall to Turks
themselves to battle for their rights – so long as they can keep out of jail.