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May 2001 1. "The Fight for Rights",
Turkish M.P. Sema Piskinsut is shaking up the political system.
2. "Turkish missile defense is casualty of crisis", Turkey's plans to launch a missile defense program appears to be the latest casualty of the nation's fiscal crisis. 3. "'Death Fasters' Put Spotlight
on Prisons", Toll of Turkish Inmates, Backers at 20. 6. "Bundesbank criticises IMF aid to Turkey", the International Monetary Fund overstepped the limits of its mandate by awarding an additional eight billion dollars (nine billion euros) of financial aid to Turkey, Bundesbank deputy president Juergen Stark said in a newspaper interview on Wednesday. 1. - Times Magazine - "The Fight for Rights": Piskinsut is a member of the ruling Democratic Left Party and, until October 2000, was the head of the parliamentary Human Rights Commission. During her two-year tenure, Piskinsut vigorously investigated a wide range of issues, from press freedom to the penal detention system, both topics hindering the country's efforts to join the E.U. Typical of her styles was a midnight expedition, shortly after she began work in March, 1998, during which she led her fellow commission members through the closed gates of Sanliurfa Prison to meet newly admitted inmates fresh from the torturers' wrack. She led similar swoops on police interrogation centers. Her modus operandi was always the same: straight to the cells, without prison staff accompaniment. "We were warned that it would be dangerous for us to conduct interviews without having guards present, but we wanted people to speak freely so we accepted the risk," Piskinsut says. The Human Rights Commission interviewed over 8,500 prisoners in provinces throughout Turkey. All the conversations were recorded and collated in 11 volumes, which are a chronicle of a penal system in which brute force was an accepted part of interrogation and discipline. The Commission interviewed 13-year-old children in Istanbul who had been subjected to electric shock therapy and convicts who had been interrogated while being hosed down with pressurized water. During the raids on police stations they recovered sticks, chains and implements of torture. One of the most disturbing reports is on the Bakirkoy Detention Center for Women and Young Offenders in Istanbul, where children complained that they were still being beaten and mistreated even after a previous Commission visit. The findings suggested that human rights violations in Turkey were not the work of a few bad apples, as successive governments maintained, but the product of systematic abuse. Turkish political commentators say the country's economic problems are due, at least in part, to a political system that has insulated itself from criticism and reform. Many of the measures being urged upon Turkey by the international community have as much to do with making government more transparent as with the details of monetary or fiscal policy. These reforms occupy a large chunk of the National Program, a document recently published by the Turkish government that sets outs its priorities - among them, a commitment that torture "cannot be tolerated under any circumstances" - in meeting the criteria for E.U. membership. Still, human rights abuses too often go either undetected or unpunished. Police and prison wardens who are tried for abuse have a mere 2% chance of being convicted, according to an Amnesty International report. The report produced by Sema Piskinsut's Commission comes to the same conclusions. It's not E.U. admission that has motivated Piskinsut's work. "We want better democracy and greater freedoms for their own sake," she says. Piskinsut has paid a price for her outspokenness, though. At the end of last year, she was moved out of her position as head of the Commission and replaced by an M.P. from the far-right Nationalist Action Party. Piskinsut has now become an outspoken critic not just of the penal system but of parliament itself. "We can't call ourselves representatives of the people," she said, in obvious frustration that the meticulously documented criticism of parliament has not hastened the pace of change. She is calling for an overhaul of political party laws that transfer power away from individual lawmakers to the party leader. Piskinsut argues that Turkey will only have the will to make the reforms it needs if it strengthens the workings of its own democracy. In what turned out to be a more than usually futile gesture to prove her point, she presented herself as a rival to Bulent Ecevit, the party leader, at her Democratic Left Party's conference on April 29th. She was not even allowed to address the delegates and among ugly scenes in which her own son was manhandled, she left the hall early to defuse further uproar. "The truth may hurt," Piskinsut says, "but it can cure as well." 2. - Middle East Newsline - "Turkish missile defense is casualty of crisis": ANKARA 3. - Washington Post - "'Death Fasters' Put Spotlight
on Prisons": 4. - Kurdish Observer - "Verheugen makes call
on prisons": ISTANBUL Verheugen said in his message that it was necessary to take further steps in a concrete fashion on the subjects of lifting the death penalty and developing cultural rights, adding that worry and terror felt by people in the EU because of the hunger strikes in Turkish prisons was increasing, that a number of people had already died, and that an urgent solution must be found so that more people did not lose their lives." 'We want a democratic Turkey' Verheugen said that bringing Turkey closer to the EU was their common goal and, adding that settling Turkey in a sound and lasting manner in the EU's community of values was a necessity of strategic interests, said, "We want Turkey to be a respected modern country in which democracy and the state of law prevail and in which human rights are respected and minorities are protected." Verheugen said that what was important now was for Turkey to take advantage of the process which began with Helsinki and to achieve concrete results on all the EU political criteria which it has not yet fulfilled, and stressed that the EU would give every support it could so that Turkey would succeed in this process. Promise of support from the EU Verheugen said that the EU was openly encouraging the Turkish government to implement its economic reform program and for finance institutions to help with this and promised that the EU would support this process. Verheugen continued to say the following: "The EU thinks that it is necessary for Turkey's efforts to secure stability once again be supported from the outside by the IMF and World Bank. I would like to note that the EU has presented an amount of Euro150 million from resources of the 2000 year budget to support Turkey in implementing the necessary economic and structural reforms." Verheugen said that Turkey's candidacy status was not being questioned in any way and that relations had been more intensive that ever since Helsinki. He noted that the Accession Partnership document and the National Program to prepare Turkey for membership were the most important elements of cooperation between the EU and Turkey in realizing its membership perspective in the future. Verheugen said that the Commission had greeted the presentation of the National Program with pleasure, adding that, thus, the first important target of this process had been reached and that the program could be the beginning of a broad transformation process in Turkey. Verheugen continuing to say the following: "Every section of the program is equally important, but political reforms carry a special importance here from the aspect of the commission and member states. When the Copenhagen political criteria are fulfilled - sound democratic institutions, the rule of the state of law, complete implementation of its measures, and the protection in a broad manner of human rights and minorities - it will be possible to begin concrete membership negotiations." 'The Turkish state must sit down with the inmates' About 350 people participated in a memorial evening in the German city of Ruesselheim to commemorate those who had lost their lives in the hunger strikes. The memorial, which was arranged by the Union of Workers and Brotherhood of the People (BYR KAR), was held in the Ruesselheim Winerval hall the other evening. Speeches were delivered by Drs. Mathias Jochheim, Hoyes Ramirez, and Johin Maiter, who are members of the International Union of Physicians and at the same time representative of the Libertad YPPW German organization. Another speech was given by John Waiter, who had spent 15 years in prison because of the Red Army Faction (RAF) case. The physicians from the International Union of Physicians who spoke said that the Turkish state must give up its delay tactics and that they should speak with the death fast resisters. Various institutions and organizations sent messages to the meeting, at which Nilufer Akbal, Mikail Aslan, and the Paris Youth Music Group performed. Also, poet Erdogan Egemenoglu read poetry during the evening. The political speeches were followed by slide and cinevision presentations. 5. - Ozgur Politika - "May 1 banned in Kurdistan!": No permission was given for celebrations of May 1 planned in Kurdistan, with the exception of Adiyaman, Malatya, and Antep. Nongovernmental organizations interpreted the prohibitions as opposition to peace and democracy. May 1 celebrations in Kurdistan, where mass participation
was being expected, have been banned in all provinces except Antep,
Adiyaman, and Malatya. Nongovernmental organizations, unions, and the
People's Democracy Party (HADEP) all protested the bans. The point at which all the reactions agreed, on the other hand, was that the ban decision in question was aimed at obstructing the Turkish labor class and the Kurdish people from meeting together. Union KESK General Secretary Sevil Erol recalled that 500,000 people had come together in Amed [Diyarbakir] on Newroz, continuing, "Such a rational cannot be counted as a rational when no security problems were experienced at all in a region in which hundreds of thousands gathered at Newroz." Erol stressed that democracy and peace were the common demands of both the Kurdish people and the working class, and pointed out that those who had not given permission for the celebrations did not want the Turkish working class and Kurdish people to get together. HADEP assembly member Bahattin Gunay, for his part, also evaluated the ban decision as an attempt to hinder the unity of the democratic forces of the Turkish and Kurdish peoples. "The ban is at the same time an effort by the powers in control to prevent unity on this day of international solidarity, Gunay said. Sexmus Cakirtas, Urfa branch administrator of the educators' union Egitim-Sen, evaluating the ban in Urfa, where celebrations were to have been held for a second time, said that they did not agree with the prohibitive mentality. Cakirtas evaluated the ban as the fear of the administrators of an organized society, adding that the ban was contrary to international law. 6. - AFP - "Bundesbank criticises IMF aid to Turkey": FRANKFURT The International Monetary Fund overstepped the limits
of its mandate by awarding an additional eight billion dollars (nine
billion euros) of financial aid to Turkey, Bundesbank deputy president
Juergen Stark said in a newspaper interview on Wednesday. |