Turkey's death squads

Middle East Report

Volumn , Issue 199, 1996, Pages 20-23

  Van Bruinessen, Martin ^a  

^a UTRECHT UNIVERSITY   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

HUMAN RIGHTS; KURDISH PEOPLE; POLITICAL ASSASSINATION;

TURKEY;

EID: 0030458774     PISSN: 08992851     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3012887     Document Type: Article

References (18)

1. A list of their names is published in A. Osman Ölmez, Türkiye siyasetinde DEP depremi (An earthquake in Turkey's politics: DEP) (Ankara: Doruk, 1995), 465-6. This book gives an excellent account of the events surrounding the first two legal Kurdish parties, up to the ban of DEP in June 1994.
2. Cumulative figures on human rights violations in 1993 released by the Human Rights Association (IHD). The figures quoted here do not include victims of assaults by guerrilla units or security forces, and they also exclude disappearances, extrajudicial executions and deaths under torture.
3. Figures for 1991 and 1992 compiled by the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey.
4. The lifting of the Kurdish parliamentarians' immunity and their subsequent political trial clearly violated European norms. Members of the European parliament repeatedly demanded the release of their colleagues as a precondition for their agreeing to Turkey's joining the European customs union. Other interests prevailed, however, and in December 1995 the European parliament voted for Turkey's membership in the customs union without Turkey having made any significant political or human rights reforms.
5. Mehmet Sincar's companions in fact mentioned the name of a person whom they suspected of involvement in the murder, but he was not even interrogated. DEP sources claim that no significant witnesses were even heard. The authorities state, however, that 12 persons were arrested.
6. Serdar Çelik, Teure Wahrheit: Der Bericht von Özgür Gündem 1993 (Cologne: GNN Verlag, 1994), 37-9.
7. "Human Rights Violations in 1993," summary statistics published by IHD in January 1994; Helsinki Watch, "Turkey: censorship by assassination continues" (New York: February 1994).
8. "Human Rights Violations in 1993," summary statistics published by IHD in January 1994; Helsinki Watch, "Turkey: censorship by assassination continues" (New York: February 1994).
9. See for instance the report in the left-wing weekly Gerçek, 14 May 1994, 6-10, allegedly based on confessions of a former Hizbullah member.
10. These were law professor Muammer Aksoy, Kemalist woman politician and lecturer Bahriye Üçok, and the journalists Çetin Emeç and Ugur Mumcu.
11. T.B.M.M. faili meçhul cinayetler arastirma komisyonu raporu (taslak) (Draft report of the parliamentary commission to investigate the killings by unknown actors) (Istanbul: Birlik Sosyalist Partisi, July 1995).
12. The village guards are a paramilitary force recruited from among Kurdish tribesmen to "protect" villages against the PKK. They have become a major factor in the guerrilla war, numbering around 60,000. They take part in military operations alongside army units and special forces but have been allowed to steal, kill and rape in neighboring villages with impunity.
13. T.B.M.M., 79.
14. Ibid., 99.
15. Ibid., 98. After DEP deputy Mehmet Sincar was murdered, his companions reported that they had seen the same Alaattin Kanat in a police car that day, and that they were convinced that he was involved in the murder. Ölmez, Türkiye siyasetinde, pp. 286-7, 292.
16. Ibid., 98. After DEP deputy Mehmet Sincar was murdered, his companions reported that they had seen the same Alaattin Kanat in a police car that day, and that they were convinced that he was involved in the murder. Ölmez, Türkiye siyasetinde, pp. 286-7, 292.
17. Ibid., 124-5. The report in fact attributes so much of the blame to JITEM, and so little to MIT, that one wonders whether the latter service helped in drafting it.
18. In October 1993, the PKK informed journalists that, because of their overall pro-state attitudes and their lack of solidarity with the much-harassed pro-Kurdish newspaper Özgür Gündem, they were no longer allowed to work in the region and had to close down their newspapers' offices there. They took this warning seriously and left. See Yilmaz Odabasi, Gueneydogu 'da gazeteci olmak (Being a journalist in the southeast) (Istanbul: Kaynak, 1994), 159-77. Odabasi, who worked in Diyarbakir for several leftist papers, also reports extensively on the pressure placed on journalists by the authorities, secret police and Hizbullah.