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European
leaders this week are expected to give Turkey a date
on which it can begin negotiations on joining the EU.
One issue has been whether the country's record on
human rights has improved.
On October 6, the day Turkey was formally
recommended by the European commission to start
talks with the EU, Ayse Ozgur woke up in a bank.
For three weeks she had been on the run in eastern
Turkey - from the man who raped her, a mother who
had starved her and a father who had sold her in
exchange for money and guns.
"In July," she sobbed, "I was raped, beaten by
father, left hungry by my mother and locked up in
the attic of our home. In August, after I became
pregnant, I was made to marry my rapist because I
had stained my family honour."
For weeks, Ayse Ozgur watched her body turn black
and blue as her forced marriage turned into a
catalogue of abuse.
"Every day he hit me. He broke my fingers,
dislocated my arm and hurt my back," recalled the
bony teenager, weeping inconsolably at a women's
support group in Van, a town on Turkey's eastern
fringe.
"I screamed and asked, 'Why are you doing this? Is
there no God that you believe in?'" said the ethnic
Kurd, who finally managed to escape on a bus from
her home town, Hakkari.
"When I got to Van, I slept on the streets or in
banks, underneath cash dispensers, and I cut my hair
short so no one would recognise me. I counted the
days until I turned 18. Then I went to the police."
In recent years Turkey has made huge strides in
stamping out human rights abuses.
The death penalty has been abolished, the once
dreaded state security courts dismantled, and
cultural and linguistic rights broadened for the
country's Kurdish, Arabic and Bosnian communities.
Ahead of this week's EU summit to decide whether to
launch membership talks with the country, prime
minister Tayyip Erdogan's Islamist-oriented
government has approved proposals to scale down
police powers, in addition to other far-reaching
constitutional and legislative reforms.
Yet human rights violations continue. Across the
Muslim nation's remote and impoverished south-east,
women like Ayse Ozgur are still prone to crimes of
violence.
To correct some of these inequities, Ankara's
parliament passed a new penal code in September
bringing Turkey into line with EU states.
But lawyers, human rights activists, psychologists,
academics and non-governmental organisations
throughout Turkey say progress is often obstructed
by a failure to implement the reforms on the ground.
"Passing legislation is one thing but changing
mentalities has proved to be quite another," said
Senal Saruhan, a feminist lawyer in Ankara who led
the campaign to revise the penal code.
"Judges and prosecutors are a real problem. They
should be educated in the new laws, given special
classes in EU legislation, if application is to be
at all successful."
Most Islamist MPs hold traditional views. Many
openly condone forced marriages - including those of
victims to their rapists - and only reluctantly
agreed to penalise virginity testing in the new
code.
"This government has not been easy to work with.
It's shown huge resistance on issues like honour
crimes," said Pinar Ilkkaracan, who runs a human
rights group in Istanbul.
"Women MPs from the [ruling] party were especially
resistant and very much behind Erdogan's attempts to
criminalise adultery. You get the feeling they're
making these changes not because their heart's in
them, but because of the demands of Europe."
Within Turkey, some human rights activists speak of
a "culture of violence". Although torture is no
longer systematic, the number of complaints of
ill-treatment in police vehicles and other places
outside formal detention centres has shot up in the
past year.
"There has been a lot of progress on the methods of
torture being used," said Turkcan Baykal, a clinical
psychologist who works at the Human Rights
Association in the western city of Izmir.
"The aim now is not to leave any physical marks on a
person's body but to harm them psychologically;
trauma that lasts for years. We get people in here
every week but they are just the tip of the
iceberg."
One human rights group said it often felt compelled
to "sweeten" its reports so Turkey would stand a
chance of being admitted to the EU.
"There are times when even we try to give a rosier
picture of events [on the ground] because the desire
of all of us is to get into the EU," said Zeki
Yuksel, who heads the Human Rights Association in
Van. "The alternative would be much worse."
Real progress, say activists, will come only if
Turkey is constantly monitored by experts in
Brussels.
"Abuse will drop, but it will not be eliminated
easily," said Levent Korkut, who heads the Turkey
branch of Amnesty International.
"It will stop, step by step, and only if Turkey is
sufficiently monitored from abroad."
For Ayse Ozgur the months ahead will be anything but
easy. She is too weak to end her pregnancy, and
doctors say she has no option but to give birth to
her rapist's child.
"I have lost my youth. I have lost my innocence,"
she cried.
· Ayse Ozgur's name has been changed
The ins and outs of membership
Leaders of the 25 countries of the European Union
meet in Brussels on Thursday and Friday to discuss
Turkey's readiness to begin negotiations for EU
membership. The summit is expected to set a date for
talks to begin.
Membership criteria require that the candidate
country must have achieved:
· Stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy,
the rule of law, human rights and respect for and
protection of minorities
· The existence of a functioning market economy as
well as the capacity to cope with competitive
pressure and market forces within the union
· The ability to take on the obligations of
membership including adherence to the aims of
political, economic and monetary union
EU countries in favour of Turkey joining:
Britain, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Finland, Sweden,
Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ireland
EU countries against Turkey joining:
Austria, Luxembourg
EU countries divided over Turkish membership:
Germany (government for, opposition and public
opinion against), France, Denmark, Hungary, Greece
(government for, public opinion strongly against),
Poland, Belgium, Netherlands, Slovenia, Cyprus,
Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia
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