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EU
Officials Visiting Ankara Must Press Turkey to
Reinvigorate Rights Reform
(Ankara, March 7, 2005) — On a key benchmark for
European Union membership, the Turkish government
has failed to honor pledges to help 378,000
displaced people, mainly Kurds, return home more
than a decade after the army forced them from their
villages in southeastern Turkey, Human Rights Watch
said in a report released today.
On March 7-8, the European Union’s commissioner for
enlargement, Olli Rehn, and a delegation of other
high-level EU officials will visit Ankara to discuss
Turkey’s membership. The EU officials should press
Turkey to take effective steps to facilitate the
return of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) to
southeastern Turkey, where Turkish security forces
expelled hundreds of thousands from their villages
during an internal armed conflict that raged during
the 1980s and 1990s.
The 37-page report, “Still Critical: Prospects in
2005 for Internally Displaced Kurds in Turkey,”
details how the Turkish government has failed to
implement measures for IDPs the United Nations
recommended nearly three years ago. Since the
European Union confirmed Turkey’s membership
candidacy in December, the Turkish government
appears to have shelved plans to enact those
measures.
The report also details how Turkey has overstated
its progress on internal displacement in reports to
the European Commission. Before the European Union
announced its decision to open membership talks, the
Turkish government sent the European Commission
statistics suggesting that the problem was well on
its way to a solution—a requirement Turkey must
fulfill for full membership. Turkey claimed that a
third of the displaced had already returned, but
Human Rights Watch revealed that permanent returns
in some places were less than a fifth of the
government’s estimate.
“When we checked Turkey’s figures on helping the
displaced return home, the numbers proved
unreliable,” said Rachel Denber, acting executive
director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central
Asia Division. “Also, the bare figures don’t convey
how, thanks to government inaction, villagers are
returning to places that are practically
uninhabitable.”
In southeastern Turkey, the government has failed to
provide infrastructure such as electricity,
telephone lines and schools to returning
communities, and has not provided proper assistance
with house reconstruction.
“What’s worse, the government’s paramilitary village
guards are attacking and killing returnees in some
parts of southeastern Turkey,” added Denber.
Numerous intergovernmental bodies, as well as
Turkish parliamentary commissions, have condemned
the village guard system, which was devised in the
1980s to combat the illegal armed Kurdish Workers’
Party (PKK, now known as Kongra Gel). More than
58,000 paramilitary village guards remain on the
government payroll.
Human Rights Watch said that the government’s
paramilitary guards have killed 11 returned
villagers in southeastern Turkey in the past three
years.
When the United Nations examined the plight of the
displaced in Turkey in 2002, it recommended that the
government establish a dedicated IDP unit, develop a
partnership with the international community for the
resolution of IDP problems, and provide compensation
for the damages arising from the displacement.
Nearly three years later, the Turkish government has
established no joint projects with intergovernmental
organizations, and there is still no central
governmental office responsible for IDPs. Last year,
the Turkish parliament passed a compensation law,
but no payments have yet been made.
It is now 18 years since Human Rights Watch warned
of the impending program of village destruction in a
1987 report during the conflict in southeastern
Turkey. The Turkish army duly carried out its
campaign with considerable violence, torturing,
“disappearing” and extrajudicially executing
villagers in the process. Human Rights Watch has
since repeatedly criticized the Turkish government’s
empty gestures in its return programs, issuing
further reports in 1995 and 2002.
“The Turkish state tried to cover up what it did,
and now it’s subjecting the displaced to years of
delay,” said Denber. “When EU officials arrive in
Ankara, they need to put the problem of the
displaced at the top of their agenda.”
Human Rights Watch called on the European Union to
press the Turkish government to move ahead by
immediately approving an IDP project submitted last
year by the United Nations Development Program. In
addition, Ankara needs to establish an agency for
IDPs that will take effective measures.
Since the European Union accepted Turkey’s
membership candidacy in 1999, human rights reform
has been a stop-start process in the country. Turkey
still has much to do on the protection of freedom of
expression, freedom of religion, language rights and
protection against torture.
“The predicament of the displaced is the most
pressing concern, but the Turkish government has
lost focus on its reform task as a whole,” Denber
noted. “Last week we had three delegates observing
trials of Ragip Zarakolu and Fikret Baskaya, a
publisher and a professor threatened with
imprisonment for expressing their nonviolent
opinions.”
Preventing torture is another area where the Turkish
government seems to have run out of energy. Turkey
has made substantial improvement in recent years,
but in order to combat persistent incidents of
torture and ill-treatment, the European Union
recommended in October 2004 that the Turkish
government establish independent monitoring of
detention facilities. Five months later, Turkey has
still not implemented independent monitoring, even
though the necessary legal mechanisms are already in
place.
In 2000, the European Union presented Turkey with a
list of benchmarks—known as the Accession
Partnership—that Turkey had to meet to become a full
member. This was revised in 2003, and will be
revised again later this year.
www.hrw.org
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