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My reporting on the Kurds landed me in a
Turkish prison
31.8.2010
By Jake Hess |
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When
Jake Hess began investigating human rights abuses,
he didn't expect to be locked up and interrogated
himself
August
31, 2010
I bumped into a local journalist friend on a recent
afternoon in Diyarbakir, the unofficial capital of
Turkish Kurdistan. "This is Turkey," he said wearily
when I asked if the police were still harassing him
because of his work. "If the police didn't bother us
[journalists], we'd think something was wrong."
In retrospect, it was a silly question. After all,
only three months before, a judge in that very city
had sentenced Vedat Kursun, the former editor of
Turkey's only Kurdish-language daily newspaper, to
166 years in prison for "doing propaganda for a
terrorist organisation". Hamdiye Ciftci, a young
Kurdish reporter known for her coverage of state
violence in the southeastern province of Hakkari,
had been thrown in jail on "terrorism" charges in
June.
Critically reporting on the Turkish government's
treatment of the Kurds is risky business indeed. I
was barely surprised, then, when civil police from
the anti-terrorism branch of the Diyarbakir Security
Directorate knocked on my hotel room door and
declared that they had come to arrest me for "being
in contact with and carrying out activities on
behalf of terror organisations", namely the PKK and
a related civilian body, the KCK. I did my best to
prepare for the uncertain journey ahead as we took
off for the the anti-terror department's detention
centre, where I'd spend my next four nights in a
dingy cell. The reasons for my detention quickly
became clear as my interrogators rifled through a
binder stuffed thick with copies of my writings on
human rights abuses in southeastern Turkey, private
email exchanges with human rights activists,
transcriptions of phone calls, and pictures of me
snapped in public places. They said they had been
monitoring my communications and following me on
foot for 7 or 8 months.
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Pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party supporters
protest over jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Getty image.
Jake Hess, a U.S. journalist detained in Turkey for
allegedly collaborating with Kurdish militants.
Photo: democracynow.org |
"Why did you write about torture?" asked the head
interrogator, in reference to a story I had
published with the Inter Press Service. "There's no
torture in Turkey. Look, we aren't torturing you!"
he insisted, awkwardly avoiding eye contact. "It
takes a lot of effort to repair the damage that
people like you do to [Turkey's] international
reputation," snapped another.
Following detailed debates about my articles dealing
with the Turkish army's use of forest fires as a
weapon of war, state violence against Kurdish women,
and Turkish bombings of northern Iraq, my captors
turned the conversation to what would, after my
writing, become the second major focus of the
charges against me: my contacts with human rights
organisations in Britain and Turkey. At the end, I
was sentenced to deportation without possibility of
appeal and sent back to the US. The others who have
been arrested as part of the same operation, haven't
fared so well.
Since 14 April 2009, Turkish police have thrown into
prison at least 840 Kurdish political activists,
mainly from the leftist and pro-Kurdish Peace and
Democracy Party (BDP), a legal formation with a
parliamentary group; many have been in custody
awaiting trial for a year or more. Although the
Turkish government claims to be cracking down on the
PKK's "urban extensions", the 7,587-page indictment
dealing with 151 of the most senior detainees
suggests the reality is rather more sinister.
Replete with spelling errors and logical
inconsistencies, the bulk of the indictment consists
of wild extrapolations based on transcriptions of
unremarkable telephone conversations, and
descriptions of peaceful political activities – such
as press statements, speeches, and demonstrations –
joined by the accused. All too typical is the file
dealing with Muharrem Erbey, the renowned lawyer and
vice-chairperson of the Human Rights Association of
Turkey, who has been in prison on accusations of
"membership of a terrorist organisation" since
Christmas Eve 2009.
The evidence against Mr Erbey includes a January
2009 interview with Voice of America radio in which
he discussed the well-documented problems of
torture, police brutality, and impunity in Turkey,
about which the prosecutor writes the following on
page 7,338 of the indictment: "It's understood [from
the interview] that Muharrem Erbey has aimed to put
our country in a difficult position in international
platforms by asserting that the state ignores the
supposed maltreatment of Kurdish people carried out
by police and soldiers in eastern provinces".
The absurdity doesn't stop there. The human rights
work Mr Erbey has carried out with the projects
section of the Dutch embassy in Turkey, the
London-based Kurdish Human Rights Project and law
firm Trott and Gentry,www.ekurd.netand
Olof Palme International Centre in Sweden are all
documented and presented as suspicious in the
indictment. This is also true of a telephone
conversation in which Mr Erbey allegedly attempts to
find a doctor to treat people who were wounded
during a demonstration in the eastern town of Agri
in April 2009.
Mr Erbey and most of the others who have been
targeted in the current wave of arrests represent a
new generation of youthful Kurdish activist-leaders
that has emerged in the period since 1999, the
pivotal year when the PKK embarked on a five-year
unilateral ceasefire, Turkey was recognised as a
candidate for EU membership, and pro-Kurdish
political parties entered local government. Since
then, the mysterious assassinations of Kurdish human
rights defenders and politicians that occurred
frequently in the 1990s have stopped, with only rare
exceptions, and Turkey's political system has become
more liberal.
The new Kurdish political class – exemplified by
people such as Mr Erbey and Osman Baydemir, the
popular mayor of Diyarbakir, both young human rights
lawyers – has taken advantage of the more open
political atmosphere to firmly establish the Kurdish
political movement in institutional realms, expand
and mobilise its grassroots base, and acquire
important experience in self-rule through running a
number of major municipalities in the southeast.
Their efforts have kept the Kurdish people's demands
for greater rights and democracy at the top of the
public agenda in Turkey and shown that these will
need to be addressed regardless of what happens to
the PKK.
Turkey's arrest operations are aimed at eliminating
this new class and the political challenge it
represents. Meanwhile, the ruling AK party's pledge
to accelerate a stalled reform process with the
stated goal of resolving the Kurdish issue –
consistently reiterated in parallel with the arrest
operations, a contradiction noted by many
commentators – is intended to expand the Turkish
government's existing base in the southeast while
simultaneously marginalising the Kurdish political
movement.
Turkey has certainly come a long way since the dark
days of the 1990s, yet the government apparently
remains unwilling to make peace with its largest
minority through inclusive and democratic
negotiations. They've never recognised the PKK's
unilateral ceasefires or proposals for a peaceful
settlement within Turkey's borders, and have
answered the BDP's overtures with mass prosecutions.
Mr Erbey and 150 other Kurdish activists go on trial
on 18 October. The proceedings will have nothing to
do with the so-called terrorism charges against
them, of which they are manifestly innocent. At
stake is the core question of Turkey's future: Is
the country ready to leave behind its authoritarian
past and accept the basic democratic rights of its
citizens? Or will war and authoritarianism consume
another generation?
Timeline: Kurdish struggle
1514 The Ottoman Sultan Selim I annexes Kurdistan,
along with Armenia.
1830s After the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-29, the
Kurds unsuccessfully try to free themselves from
Turkish control.
1920s-1940s The Turkish government, led by President
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, denies the existence of a
Kurdish ethnicity, categorising them instead as
"Mountain Turks". The Kurdish language, schools,
music, literature, associations and names are
banned.
1920-1937 Kurds make several attempts at rebellion,
but are supressed each time.
1978 Abdullah Öcalan forms the Kurdistan Workers'
Party (PKK), a separatist group fighting for an
independent Kurdish homeland.
1984 PKK begins an armed campaign against the
Turkish government. Over the next 15 years between
20,000 and 30,000 people, including civilians, are
killed.
1991 The ban is lifted on the Kurdish language, but
it still cannot be broadcast or used in political
situations.
1993 PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan announces a
temporary ceasefire, which ends after just over a
month, when the group kills 33 Turkish soldiers.
1999 Öcalan is arrested in Kenya by Turkish security
forces after an unsuccessful search for a country to
grant him asylum. He is taken back to Turkey where
he is found guilty of treason and separatism, and is
sentenced to death, which is commuted to life
imprisonment when the death penalty is abolished.
2010 Vedat Kursun, former editor of Azadiya Welat,
Turkey's only Kurdish language newspaper, is
sentenced to 166 years in prison for allegedly
spreading propaganda for a terrorist organisation
Copyright, respective
author or news agency, independent co.uk
Read more
by Jake Hess
'We're Not Living, Just
Not Dying' 4.8.2010
Turks Let Kurdish
Forests Burn 13.7.2010
Kurdish women
fight the 'culture of rape' in Turkey 2.7.2010
Torture prevails
despite Turkish govt declaration of ‘zero
tolerance’ 5.5.2010
We won’t give up, the fight for peace and
democracy in Turkey: An interview with Sebahat
Tuncel 24.12.2008
The Kurdish Struggle in Turkey: An interview
with Sebahat Tuncel, MP 23.6.2008
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