More than 800 tortured in Turkey: NGO

As many as 830 people have been subjected to torture or ill-treatment in Turkey in 2019, a Turkish human rights organization has claimed.

The Evrensel daily reported on Tuesday that Abdullah Zeytun, the head of the Turkish Human Rights Association (IHD)’s Diyarbakir branch, made the claim while issuing a joint statement by a number of human rights activists in Turkey’s southeastern city of Diyarbakir.

The IHD’s Diyarbakir head Zeytun outlined in the statement that there had been an increase in the “unlawful detentions and arrests, violations of freedom of thought, speech and press as well as cases of violence against women and children” in Turkey during the first 11 months of 2019.

“According to the data of IHD, the number of people in Turkey who claim they have been subjected to torture or ill-treatment in custody or elsewhere during the first 11 months of 2019 is 830,” he said.

Those who gathered on Tuesday in Diyarbakir for the reading of the statement, titled “All humans are humans with rights”, included members from the IHD, the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (TIHV), and the city’s Bar Association and Chamber of Medicine.

Representatives from several human rights organizations and foundations as well as bar associations and medical chambers from across Turkey on Tuesday gathered in Istanbul, Izmir, Adana and Diyarbakir provinces and made statements to mark the internationally recognized Human Rights Day.

The 10th of December is internationally commemorated for being the day on which, in 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Zeytun held forth that the IHD data shows how commonly and systematically the torture and ill-treatment take place in detention centers, while detentions are being carried out, and other places.

He also listed other cases of human rights violations for prisoners in Turkey as strip-searching, solitary confinement and receiving treatment in handcuffs, adding that the indifference of the authorities towards prisoners with serious illnesses may even result in death in some cases.

“The ruling power tries to destroy freedom of speech and organization, one of the most fundamental human rights, through its authoritarian policies and the verdicts of the [Turkish] judiciary, which is under political tutelage,” Zeytun also argued on Tuesday.

He said detaining or arresting people on “arbitrary” charges such as “membership in a terrorist organization” and “making propaganda for a terrorist organization” by showing their social media posts as evidence “reinforces the idea that Turkey’s judicial independence has weakened.”

The statement read in Diyarbakir also included some demands for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to meet in order to reduce and prevent cases of human rights violations in Turkey.

“The government should take the necessary precautions to prevent femicides and violence against women. Policies promoting gender equality must be adopted and the impunity policy for perpetrators who use violence against women must end so that they can be punished effectively,” Zeytun noted.

Reminding once again that “torture is absolutely forbidden in the law,” he continued to say that those officials who engage in it must be dismissed from their public jobs and punished properly after facing trial.

Gulseren Yoleri, the head of IHD’s Istanbul branch and a lawyer, on Tuesday also emphasized in a speech in Istanbul to mark the Human Rights Day that Turkey still feels the effects of the state-of-emergency regime that lasted for two years.

Declared by the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s governing AKP government a few days after a failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016, Turkey’s state-of-emergency remained in effect until July 19, 2018.

During that period, the AKP government issued a number of decrees and purged over 150,000 public officers, politicians, businessmen, artists, and journalists over their alleged links to the failed coup attempt.

“This period saw the abandonment of the principle of constitutionalism, which limits the power of the ruling government, paving the way for [Turkey’s] institutions to become mere tools for an oppressive regime,” Yoleri explained.

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from IPA NEWS https://ipa.news/2019/12/11/more-than-800-tortured-in-turkey-ngo/