As the War on Terror – Bush’s crusade – is launched, Turkey has joined its ranks. What are the implications for the already poor human rights record of this country?
So Turkey – that shining example of modernity, a secular Muslim country – will be sending special forces to Afghanistan to “support humanitarian missions and protect innocent people…when necessary.” It’s a chilling thought. It would have made Mehmet Ali Tekin, an erstwhile journalist from Istanbul, cry. His image stares back at us as we leave the office. For those of us who have met him the glance at his photograph before our departure is a guilt-ridden reminder of how little we have done for the thousands of Turkish political detainees.
The Turkish presence will help George Bush peddle the lie that we are not witness to a war against Islam. Yet Turkey launched its own crusade in February 1997 when its general-led National Security Council stated that Islam and Muslims represented the biggest threat to the republic. Violent crackdowns have ensued, yet scarily we see endless column inches devoted to Turkey as a model for the remaking of Afghanistan. It seems to be of no concern that some 30,000 Turkish women are banned from university for wearing a headscarf. Many more cannot hold jobs in public office or basic identification documents unless they remove their head-covering. Ditto if you’re a man with a beard.
It’s three years since I went to Turkey as part of a team of human rights monitors. Whilst there we met with political prisoners and assessed how the situation was rapidly deteriorating, particularly for practising Muslims.
The ban on the Welfare Party that the European Court of Human Rights deemed valid in July last year is the least of Turkey’s crimes. Its security services are some of the most vicious known on this earth. Their political masters over many years have directly or otherwise been the generals of its armed forces. Oppose them and you could end up imprisoned without charge, tortured and forced to confess to treasonous crimes that merit life sentences, or even disappear. Maybe like Feliz Bayaz, a student jailed for wearing a headscarf to class, you are killed in a hit and run accident as you leave your incarceration.
Our team met with members of Mazlumder, a human rights organisation whose activists have been subject to arbitrary arrest, its offices repeatedly closed down, their bank accounts often frozen. They have represented all manner of victim including the most apolitical of citizens, dervishes. One was beaten to death by prison guards after being arrested for violating the constitutional ban on religious (i.e. Muslim) dress. His friends, similarly attired, were locked up when they came to take his body away for burial.
Tekin was a writer at Selam, a former Muslim newspaper based in Istanbul. Its staff faced peculiar and extreme persecution. Gul Aslan, Huda Kaya, Alpetkin Dursunoglu, Nurettin Sirin are just a few of the others arrested and detained. At one point Kaya and her three daughters faced a possible death penalty for participating in a peaceful demonstration against the headscarf ban. The charges against one of her daughters, Gul Intisaar Saatcioglu, related to her composition and recital of a poem entitled ‘Song of Freedom’ at the rally in Malatya. Eventually they were released on suspended sentences. Koral, was sentenced to over a 100 years imprisonment on 33 separate charges– to be served consecutively – for writing an article criticising the burgeoning Turkish-Israeli alliance.
Tekin was originally arrested in 2000 in connection with the murder of Umur Mumcu, another journalist killed in 1993. Since Mumcu’s murder several people from a variety of political backgrounds have been arrested for the same crime and eventually released. Tekin and his co-defendants were tortured. After a month the charges were changed to membership of an illegal organisation – Selam. He was sentenced in January to 12 and half years in prison. Like Kaya at one point he faced a possible death penalty.
Aslan spent three years in Bandirma Prison without charge. How do we know that those we met there were not terrorists masquerading as prisoners of conscience? Any doubts were dispelled when we tried to leave. Two heavily armed guards stopped us on the grounds that our visit should last all day. “It’s okay they can go” one growled, “They’re with the political detainees.”
At the end of 1999 Turkey was invited to negotiate for EU entry. Less than two months later the appeal courts were ready to reinstate the death penalty against Kaya et al. Their convictions currently bounce between appellate courts which cannot decide whether death, life imprisonment or eight years will adequately punish them. A few insipid words from Commissioner Patten on reminding Turkey of its responsibilities ring hollow in the ears of those who know about what’s going on there, let alone the people of those cells. European civil society didn’t require that Turkish adherents to the Islamic faith should not be abused, before their government was allowed to begin the processes that lead to either joining the EU or receiving financial assistance or favoured trading status.
Post-September 11 to be a so-called ‘Islamist’ is a crime in almost every land, what hope have the forgotten Muslims of Turkey at the hands of their secular Taliban? The last I heard Tekin was in solitary confinement allowed occasional visits from family but no-one else. In the days before Turkey could negotiate and freedom to believe meant anything to anyone at all, his lawyers would threaten to litigate and appeal all the way to ECHR. Not now.
Arzu Merali is a writer on human rights and one of the founders of the Islamic Human Rights Commission.
Image: US FORCES in TURKEY, Jerry “Woody, CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED
