Human Rights Developments – TURKEY

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Human Rights Developments

The human rights situation in Turkey continued to deteriorate in 1994, in large part due to the government’s heavy-handed response to an escalation of the conflict in southeastern Turkey. The government restricted freedom of expression and association, especially of groups voicing opposition to government policy in the southeast or toward Turkey’s large Kurdish minority. Political freedom also was limited. In March 1994, the Turkish parliament lifted the parliamentary immunity of eight deputies, six of whom were deputies from the Kurdish-based Democracy Party (DEP). In June, Turkey’s Constitutional Court banned the Democracy Party and stripped immunity from the remainder of its deputies, though a new Kurdish-based party, the Peoples’ Democracy Party (HADEP), was formed in its place. Eventually eight parliamentarians whose immunity had been removed, seven from DEP and one independent, were charged with treason and separatism, allegedly for collaboration with the banned PKK, a violent guerrilla group. Torture in pre-trial police detention, death-squad style assassinations with alleged links to security forces, and violent police house raids in which alleged suspects are killed all continued in 1994.

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• Human Rights Watch/Helsinki publications for 1994 included Turkey: 21 Deaths in Detention and Turkey: Forced Displacement of Ethnic Kurds From Southeastern Turkey, based on our August-September 1994 mission. The Human Rights Watch Women's Rights Project released State Control of Women's Virginity in Turkey, based on a 1993 mission. Human Rights Watch/Helsinki also regularly published articles and issued letters and press releases condemning abuses by the Turkish government and the PKK.