Author: Badalian Vardan

AL-Monitor
The Turkish government no longer sees the need to conceal torture,
especially of Kurdish women in the southeast of the country.
By Pinar Tremblay
July 8, 2020
Picture this: A woman is home alone in Diyarbakir province in Turkey's
Kurdish-majority southeast. At 5 a.m., 100 policemen from
counterterrorism and special forces units storm the apartment,
instructing the neighbors to stay inside and not communicate with
anyone. Then they sledgehammer the door and unleash two police dogs to
attack Sevil Rojbin Cetin. But that is only the beginning.
Cetin is an activist in women’s movements and a former Peoples'
Democratic Party (HDP) mayor, elected in 2014 and replaced by a
government appointee in 2016.
Cetin was interrogated for 3½ hours in her apartment while her legs
were bleeding from multiple dog bites. The apartment was turned upside
down, while she was blindfolded and beaten.
She was stripped half naked with her hands tied, while photos were
taken of her. The physical and sexual torture was coupled with verbal
abuses; a gun was held to her head. “At one point she was taken to the
balcony and the officer told her, ‘If your apartment was on the 5th
floor, you would have jumped by now and we would not have to deal with
you,” said Meral Danis Bestas, a pro-Kurdish HDP lawmaker.
Cetin’s Attorney Gulistan Ates, who took photos of her injuries after
the ordeal and shared them with the press, was called to the police
station and an investigation has been launched against him.
The 2019 US State Department human rights report emphasized that
violations affect Turkey's Kurdish citizens disproportionally. Kurdish
women or women who refuse to be model citizens in the eyes of the
Turkish state are increasingly becoming targets of arbitrary arrests,
strip searches, sexual violence in detention, insults and threats of
rape.
Remziye Tosun, HDP lawmaker who has been targeted for wearing white
scarves in the parliament, told Al-Monitor, “During the siege of Sur
[in 2016], I stayed at home with my young children. Then they
[security forces] took us outside; I had my two daughters with me —
one was 18 months and the other nine years old. The security forces
were determined to send my children to social services despite my
pleas to call my family. But they sent my 9-year-old to an orphanage;
my nursing child was allowed to stay in prison with me.”
Tosun said that since 2015 state forces have increased gradually the
intensity of torture and abuse of women. “We have gone back in time —
back to the days of Esat Oktay Yildiran. That is the mentality of the
AKP [Justice and Development Party] right now; torture has come back
with a vengeance.” (Yildiran was a military officer who was notorious
for his gruesome torture techniques at the Diyarbakir prison in the
1980s.)
Tosun’s house in Sur was demolished, and she was imprisoned for 15
months with her youngest child. Despite all that has happened, she
keeps her kind and compassionate spirit. “The thing that hurt the most
was not the physical hardship but the humiliation. One day we were
cleaning the newly built prison in Elazig, but we had little access to
cleaning products. We saw a group of female guards staring at us, so
one of the inmates asked why the guards laughed nervously among
themselves. One replied, 'Look they speak, they are human.' This I
cannot forget, but I understand.”
Tosun said that she has forgiven those guards, adding, “The prejudice
against the Kurds, the sayings about the Kurds having tails and not
being civilized is still happening because of the official education
system. And that mindset helps justify cruel treatment and
discrimination.”
The Kurds in Turkey are perceived as pseudo-citizens, and therefore as
potential terrorists. The Kurds are accepted to some degree, and as
long as they assimilate diligently they are viewed as prospective
Turks.
Ayse Acar Basaran, HDP lawmaker and spokeswoman for the HDP’s Women’s
Council, told Al Monitor, “Since July 2015, we have had over 16,000
members of our party detained by the security forces. About 4,000 are
in prison.”
Basaran noted that all women’s organizations have been shut down since
the July 15, 2016, coup attempt. Violence against women has spiked
even further as men are given a blank check and women are left more
vulnerable in their homes and on the streets. “When the government
ended the peace process and intensified its aggressive security
policies women became the biggest victims. Now they are arresting
members of the two remaining women’s associations — Rosa Women's
Association and TJA-Free Women’s Movement. The charges against the
members include attending International Women's Day on March 8,
promoting peace, searching for missing women and seeking justice for
female victims of domestic violence. Women — particularly those in the
Kurdish women’s movement — pose a direct challenge to the AKP’s wish
to monopolize power, because they are so organized,” she added.
Eren Keskin, vice-president of Turkey’s Human Rights Association and a
prominent attorney, told Al-Monitor that torture of women both “in
detention and while being taken into detention is becoming routine.
Torture is clearly defined as illegal in both the Turkish Constitution
and several international treaties that Turkey has signed.”
In the 1980s, torture was hidden and frequently denied by government
officials. Today, senior bureaucrats welcome and even encourage it.
For example, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said in April, “I told
[the security forces] when you catch them [terrorists] tear them
apart.” Soylu also said that photos of the bodies would be made
public. Some of those commenting on these images on social media
suggest further gruesome acts on the alleged terrorists. In what seems
to have become the normalization of torture and violence, the display
of the mutated body parts of Kurdish women have become an event to
celebrate.
Sebnem Korur Fincanci, president of the Human Rights Foundation of
Turkey, announced that according to the foundation's records one in
every 500 people in Turkey has been tortured.
HDP lawmakers are now asking who is responsible for torturing Cetin
for 3½ hours, and who gave the order for this torture. The images of
the torture did not cause an uproar among social media users. So far,
no police investigation has been launched about any torture claims.
The problem of impunity of government officials in Turkey has reached
levels never seen before. Instead, we can expect more investigations
for human rights lawyers, HDP lawmakers and journalists who dare to
report cases of torture or abuse.
There are several loopholes in the law to protect torturers. Although
torture is to receive severe punishment, the prosecution can easily
turn the case into “an act of brutality,” which would not even cost
the officer his job. These acts are becoming routine because they are
condoned by the government and justified under the argument of
“combatting terrorism” — with little to no room left to ask how
torturing these women helps combat terror.
Turkey is regressing fast to the days when police officers marched
chanting, “Damn human rights” — starting in 1992 at a funeral of four
officers.
 

Arab News
by Abdulrahman Al-Rashed
 14:24
Few people know that Turkey has a military base in Mogadishu, far from
its borders, and that Turkey’s largest embassy in the world is in the
Somali capital; noting the only thing in common between Libya and
Somalia is that they are both torn by war. Turkey has also had a
foothold in Sudan’s Suakin Island, but its plan to build a military
base there collapsed with the ouster of President Omar Al-Bashir, as
the new leadership in Khartoum canceled all military agreements with
Ankara.
Are these Turkish red circles scattered on the map of the region the
fruits of a well-planned policy, an expansionist project or just the
reactions of a narcissist?
During the early years of the war in Syria, the Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan was reluctant to cross the borders militarily.
Today, however, his forces are inside Syria, but they have lost most
of their main battles against the Russians and the forces of the Assad
regime, as well as against the Americans. The areas assigned by the
Turkish government as border crossings inside Syria have shrunk.
Against this backdrop, Erdogan has been keen to broadcast the news of
his forces’ victories in Libya to the Turkish people, who are
depressed by their poor and deteriorating living conditions. His plan
was to spread a stream of news promising his people gains, most
notably the signing of oil agreements with Libya, and his intention to
explore the areas he has drawn as a maritime border in the
Mediterranean, despite Greek objections. He has also hurried to talk
about oil discoveries.
But all the happy news may be nothing more than an attempt to raise
the morale of the Turkish people, who have been receiving successive
economic blows, one after another, for two years now due to political
reasons.
The damage done by Turkey’s military adventures in the region, often
funded by the small country of Qatar looking for a regional power to
climb on, is not to be underestimated.
Indeed, the Turkish president is following in the footsteps of the
Iranian regime and its expansion in the region, with the latter’s
plans set off by the signing of the nuclear deal and its forces’
deployment in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
Following the Iranian model, Turkey is using foreign militias in its
war in Libya, and there are reports of its intervention in Yemen too.
It has also used Syrian militias to strike the Syrian Kurds of the
Syrian Democratic Forces.
Well, these adventures and military bases do not tell us what
Erdogan’s policy is, if there is one. Why? What is the expected
outcome?
Last December, Malaysia hosted an Islamic summit limited to Erdogan
and the presidents of Iran, Indonesia and the emir of Qatar, claiming
to study the affairs of the Islamic nation. There, Erdogan tried to
present himself as their leader, and to make the summit an alternative
to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Makkah. However, the
summit failed, and Malaysia tried to make it clear that the Turks’
statements did not reflect their point of view. Later, Malaysia’s
Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed, ousted from his ethnic Malay
political party in May, was dismissed.
On the other hand, Erdogan’s project calls for building a major
regional power parallel to Iran, and possibly replacing it, given that
the US blockade of the Iranians has already weakened them
considerably. Turkey, with its 80 million people, assumes regional
roles in Central Asia but has not succeeded much against Russia and
Iran. Unlike Saudi Arabia and Iran, with their huge oil reserves,
Turkey is a country without substantial financial resources and with
an economy largely dependent on Russian tourism, European markets and
Turkish remittances from the West. This is why Erdogan is relying on
Qatari support to save him from every crisis, such as the coronavirus
pandemic that has halted the economy and the collapse of the lira,
which was a concern until Doha gave him $15 billion.
At the moment, Turkey is present in three seas: The Black Sea, the
Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. The expected result of its
political expansion and military involvement will not be the spread of
the influence of the ruler of Ankara, but rather weakening it; as he
will not be able to act freely in a vast and troubled region without
powerful allies.
Erdogan is still facing undecided tests, such as in the war in Syria,
Russian missiles issue, and his military dispute with the Americans.
Abdulrahman Al-Rashed is a veteran columnist. He is the former general
manager of Al-Arabiya news channel, and former editor-in-chief of
Asharq Al-Awsat.