Curbing Torture Top EU -Turkey Priority

With a one-sentence law the Turkish government can effectively curb torture, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said today. In a letter to EU officials and the Turkish foreign minister who are meeting in Ankara on January 31, Human Rights Watch urged the parties to prioritize combating torture by giving all detainees immediate access to a lawyer.

In legislation submitted to parliament in November, Prime Minister Abdullah Gül expressed his intention that all detainees in police custody should have prompt access to legal counsel, a vital safeguard against torture. Unfortunately, the legislation, which passed in December, was apparently mis-drafted and left restrictions on access to counsel in place. A further amendment repealing one paragraph of an article of a 1992 law is necessary to achieve Prime Minister Gül's goal of ensuring access to counsel, curbing persistent torture, and satisfying this critical element of EU accession criteria.

"For the past twenty years, Human Rights Watch has reported how detainees cut off from the outside world in Turkish police stations have been tortured, sexually assaulted, and even killed," said Elizabeth Andersen, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia Division

"Access to legal counsel should spell the end of these horrific practices. The government should go ahead and finish what it set out to do."

On January 27, Human Rights Watch wrote to the Turkish justice minister alerting him to the need for this further action and listing ten reported cases of torture since the new government came to power in November. Several of the cases involved juvenile victims of torture. In another case, a villager in Van province told Human Rights Watch that gendarmes arrested him following a property dispute in November, stripped him naked, beat him on the soles of the feet, poured salt in his eyes, and attempted to rape him with a truncheon.

When the villager complained to the Human Rights Association, a Turkish rights group, gendarmes re-arrested him and attempted to make him withdraw his complaint by threatening to plant incriminating evidence in his house. After the villager received a medical report consistent with his allegations, the local prosecutor opened an investigation.

After visits to Turkey, United Nations and Council of Europe experts have all concurred that access to a lawyer is the key protection required to curb torture there. Currently, anyone detained for crimes under State Security Court jurisdiction cannot see their lawyer for the first two days?the period in which police and gendarmes most frequently torture their detainees. The persistence of incommunicado detention for political detainees has a knock-on effect for those detained on common criminal charges, and consequently they are also commonly denied the assistance of a lawyer.

The EU accession process was an important catalyst in Turkey's human rights progress in 2002. Achievements included abolition of the death penalty, easing of restrictions on broadcasting and education in minority languages (among them Kurdish, spoken by Turkey's large Kurdish minority), shortened police detention periods, and lifting of the state of emergency in the formerly troubled southeast. Since its election in November 2002, the new Justice and Development Party (AKP) government has maintained the flow of reform, with measures offering retrial to four former Kurdish parliamentary deputies imprisoned after an unfair trial in 1994, and restoring full property rights to non-Muslim minority foundations.

Turkey's next major accession hurdle will be in December 2004, when the European Union will determine whether Turkey has fulfilled the political criteria for membership "the protection of human rights, democracy, rule of law and respect for minorities" and if so, set a date for membership negotiations to begin.

"The European Union and Turkey should not lose momentum during this two-year interval," said Andersen. "Turkey should avoid the halting pattern of progress it followed during the first two years of candidacy for membership."

In addition to curbing torture, Human Rights Watch's letter to the European Union outlines other priorities for reform, including an end to prosecutions of government critics, a plan to enable return of villagers driven from their homes during the conflict between Turkish security forces and the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) in the 1990s, an end to small-group isolation in Turkey's prisons, and safeguards to protect asylum-seekers and refugees in Turkey.

Human Rights Watch also raises two issues not previously included in the European Union's suggested reform program: Human Rights Watch urges the European Union to press Turkey to establish alternative civilian service for conscientious objectors to compulsory military service.

Human Rights Watch also urges an end to Turkey's headscarf ban, which prevents thousands of female students from attending high school and university education because they wear the headscarf. Teachers and doctors are also dismissed if they choose to wear the headscarf on duty.

"If Turkey is going to meet the criteria by December 2004, it will need to get the necessary laws in place this year, in order to show a convincing track record of implementation next," said Andersen.

"Turkey deserves the credit it has received for recent progress, but that credit must inspire further determination, not, as in the past, complacency." (NM)

* Human Rights Watch's letter to the EU and Turkish government and accompanying briefing paper are available at http://hrw.org/press/2003/01/turky-bck013003.htm and http://hrw.org/press/2003/01/turky-ltr013003.htm. --