“This second trial is being conducted like a continuation of the first, in complete violation of the reforms made to the Constitution and the rulings of the European Human Rights Court” declared Mr. Sezgin Tanrikulu, for the defence. “The Court always accepts the demands of the prosecution and rejects all the requests formulated by the defence. The basic principle should have imposed equal treatment of defence and prosecution lawyers and an ending of all the violations observed to date. But, from the start we have been taking part in a phoney and superficial trial …  The President of the Court has not shown any even handed treatment of the defence and the prosecution. He has based all his decisions solely on the basis of the Public Prosecutor’s allegations …  Every time that witnesses were heard, the prosecution has done all it could to curtail the evidence, and demanded that questions be put to them collectively. In the end we were unable to cross examine witnesses for the prosecution” stressed Mr. Tanrikulu.

At the request of defence lawyer Mr. Yusuf Alatas, the Court decided by a majority, and despite the objections of the prosecution, to hear four witnesses. “The Court hears witnesses on events that took place 10 years ago but, when it comes to defence witnesses, it refuses to do so claiming that they cannot be reliable because of the lapse of time since the events” added Mr. Alatas.

“I am a member of the Durken tribe, which refused to serve as village protectors. The son of chief of the village protectors, Abdullah Dursun, decided to join the maquis (guerrillas). He was the only one who had continued his education. The Dursun tribe put the responsibility for this onto my tribe. As I was the only one with any education, I was kidnapped and kept in confinement. Leyla Zana came to act as mediator and find a solution” declared one of the witnesses, adding “according to our traditions, when a woman acts as mediator, one is bound to accept her solution … But this events were in no way political acts”.

Former M.P. Hatip Dicle, stressed that it was with the encouragement of the President of the time, Turgut Ozal, that they took the initiative or acting as mediators, to end the sufferings, tears and bloodshed. Selim Sadak added, for his part, that “Turgut Ozal should be counted amongst the martyrs for democracy. He wanted to find a solution to the Kurdish question. And his heart did not stop  beating of its own accord,  but was stopped”

Orhan Dogan remarked that “Don’t forget the Rosenbergs … It is 53 later that the witness in the Rosenberg case has come clean … We came out openly and bravely with an alternative to bad policies. They offered us Ministries, then position of Presidents of Commissions and even public business contracts, but we refused”.

Lack of time prevented Leyla Zana from being called to speak. The Court once again refused to release them on bail and adjourned the next hearing  to 18 July, when four more witnesses will be heard.
 

•  TURKISH COURT SENTENCES FORMER DEHAP PRESIDENT AND THREE  LEADERS TO NEARLY TWO YEARS IMPRISONMENT.  On 26 June, the ex-President of the People’s Democratic Party (DEHAP  — pro-Kurdish), Mahmut Abassoglu, and three former leaders of the party were each sentenced to nearly three years imprisonment for “falsifying official documents”. The four were accused of falsifying documents dealing with the setting up of local branches of their party in order to be able to stand candidates for the November 2002 General Elections.

Twenty-two other former party officials have been acquitted in this case. Mr. Abbasoglu did not stand as candidate for a second term as president at his party’ congress on 8 June. He was replaced by Tuncer Bakirhan.  DEHAP, which denies any links with the PKK, is being threatened with a banning order (like all previous pro-Kurdish parties) by the Turkish Courts on the grounds of “presumed links with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party” (i.e. the PKK now renamed KADEK).

The party had been founded in 1999 by sympathisers of  the Party of People’s Democracy (HADEP) which was banned by the Constitutional Court for “association with Kurdish secessionist rebels”.
 

• TURKEY OPENS MILITARY BASES TO AMERICANS BUT STILL DISTRUSTS  IRAQI KURDISTAN.  On 24 June, Abdullah Gul, Turkish Foreign Minister, announced that Turkey will open its military bases, its ports and airports to the coalition forces in Iraq and allow the transit of humanitarian aid through the country. He did not specify the date when this decision would come into force, nor which  military bases were affected. Abdullah Gul announced that the peace-keeping forces could also use these bases for a year. He explained that the presence of these troops on Turkish soil did not depend on parliamentary approval, unlike the use of the bases for military operations. Authorising the use of installations for humanitarian purposes did not require parliamentary approval, according to some experts.
This announcement seems to be part of an effort to warm up relations between Ankara and Washington following on the Turkish Parliament’s decision, in March 2003, not to authorise the US forces to use these bases for military operations in Iraq.

Turkey already allows the coalition forces to transport humanitarian aid to Iraqi Kurdistan through its Southern ports and across the borders between the two countries. According to some diplomats, Ankara would maintain the condition that no soldier or weapons enter Iraq through its territory. Officials say that the United States has not yet replied to the Turkish proposal.

Turkey had closed its border crossing at Habur on 18 June for a day after the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) had prevented, the day before, a group of 40 Iraqis, claiming to be businessmen from the city of Kirkuk, from going to Turkey without any travel documents.

Furthermore, on 19 June, the UNO  special envoy to Iraq, Sergio Viera de Mello, visited Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan, for discussions with leaders of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). During his brief visit, Mr. Viera de Mello also inspected several projects being run by UN agencies and met relatives of Iraqis who had disappeared under the Saddam Hussein regime.
 

• EUROCOURT FINDS TURKEY GUILTY OF “INHUMAN AND DEGRADING TREATMENT”.   On 19  June, the European Human Rights Court found Turkey guilty of ill-treating, during detention before trial, a Kurd later sentenced for “separatism”, in a trial which the court also ruled had been inequitable. The Court considered that Hulki Gunes, a 40 year old Kurd, arrested in 1992 near Diyarbekir and suspected of having taken part in a shoot out in which a soldier had been killed, had suffered “inhuman and degrading treatment” during his detention. Mr. Gunes had, in particular, complained of having been submitted to electric shock treatment and blows to different parts of his body.

The Court, moreover, considered that the petitioner’s trial, in which he had been sentenced to life imprisonment in March 1994  for “separatism and attacks on the State’s security” had been inequitable because the State Security Court that sentenced him contained an Army judge. The European Court finally found Ankara guilty of not having allowed the petitioner to cross-examine the gendarmes who accused him, and whose testimony was the only evidence against him. “The Court is not unaware of the undeniable difficulties of the struggle against terrorism (…), but it considers that these factors cannot lead to limiting to such an extent the defence rights of an accused person, whoever he may be” the judges ruled.

The petitioner, at the moment jailed in Diyarbekir, was granted 25,000 euros damages and 15,000 euros costs.

• SIX PKK FIGHTERS KILLED IN LESS THAN TWO WEEKS IN TURKISH KURDISTAN.  Two Kurdish fighters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK, renamed KADEK) were killed on 24 June during a clash with the Turkish Army near the village of Meselidere, in the Province of Siirt. Two other PKK fighters were killed on 19 June in another clash with the Turkish army in Bingol Province where, on 15 June two other PKK fighters had been killed.

For several weeks past, civil organisations in the region have been organising demonstrations to demand a general amnesty for all Kurdish fighters so as to establish a lasting peace. The Minister of the Interior, Abdulkadir Aksu, proposed an amnesty for Kurdish fighters on 27 June. The Bill, unveiled at a  televised Press Conference, proposes a simple pardon foursome and reduction in the sentences for others. “It is a  new and important step forward by the government to re-establish peace” declared the Minister. The proposals in the Bill, which may be put before parliament next week, envisage pardon for those who surrender and who have never shed any blood and reductions in the sentences of others, on condition that they give information about their organisation. All leaders are excluded from any offer of amnesty. People already found guilty will be offered reductions in their sentences of between half and three quarters — on condition that they cooperate with the authorities. The government’s offer (the eighth of its kind) has been attacked by Tuncer Bakirhan, leader of the People’s Democratic Party (DEHAP — pro-Kurdish) who demands a general amnesty.
 

•  “TOO MUCH RED, GREEN AND YELLOW”:  STAGE DECOR SEIZED BY TURKISH POLICE.  On 17 June  On 17 June the Turkish police burst into a theatre in Hakkari Province to seize the stage decor which, apparently, contained too much red, green and yellow for their taste (these are, indeed, the colours of the Kurdish flag).

The irruption occurred after a school teacher, who had attended a rehearsal of the play, phoned the authorities to denounce a so-called plot, according to the Turkish daily Radikal.  Display of these three colours often gives rise to accusations of propaganda or support for separatism. The actors, who were taken in for questioning by the Public Prosecutor, cancelled the show, according to the Turkish daily Milliyet. One of them, Mahir Gunsiray, denied that the play, called Gavara, had anything to do with the Kurdish problem and expressed his “surprise” at the seizing of the decorations. “This incident is a really serious blow at a time when Parliament is working to adopt reforms to enable our country to join the European Union” he declared.
 

• PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY  OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE ACCUSES TURKEY OF “COLONISING”  TURKISH-OCCUPIED  PART  OF CYPRUS.  On 25 June Turkey and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC — unrecognised by anyone except Ankara) attacked a report, adopted the day before by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which accuses Turkey of “colonising” the Turkish part of the island. “It’s not true. These allegations are baseless” declared Abdullah Gul, head of the Turkish Foreign Office, to the Press.

The report accuses Turkey of carrying out a “disguised colonisation” of Northern Cyprus since the Turkish military intervention in 1974 which divided the island into Turkish and Greek sectors. Of some 200,000  inhabitants of the TRNC, 115,000  are settlers who, mainly, have come from Anatolia, according to the document. Tens of thousands of Turkish Cypriots have left their country for Great Britain and other Commonwealth countries. On 24 June, the PACE passed (by 68 For, 15 Against and 2 abstentions) a recommendation asking “Turkey, as well as its subordinate local Turkish Cypriot administration, to put an end to this process of colonisation by Turkish settlers”.

“Turkey is not an occupation force and never had any such intention” insisted Mr. Gul. “This report is inequitable and biased and does not reflect realities in Cyprus” declared, for his part, the spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Husseyin Dirioz. The President of the TRNC, Rauf Denktas described the report as counter-productive in the search for peace on the island. “If this report aims at bringing peace and a consensus on the island it undoubtedly does not serve this aim” according to Mr. Denktas.

The report, which has no mandatory character recommends that the Ministerial Council of the Council of Europe to commission the European Committee on population to carry out a census of Cyprus and to promote “the idea or creating a fund to finance the eventual voluntary return of the Turkish settlers to Turkey”. Efforts are under way to relaunch a dialogue between the Greek and Turkish Cypriots leaders on the basis of a plan for the reunification of the island put forward by the UN General Secretary, Kofi Annan, which broke down in March 2003.  Some confidence-building measures have taken place since then, in particular the opening of the “green line” separating the two sectors by the Turkish Cypriot authorities. The Cyprus Republic signed, on 16 April, the treaty of membership of the European Union, leaving the TRNC, for the time being, ostracised by Europe.
 

•  ANTI-TORTURE  COMMITTEE  OF COUNCIL OF EUROPE DENOUNCES PERSISTANCE OF TORTURE.   In a report published on 25 June, the Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) of the Council of Europe  denounces the persistence of torture in Turkish police stations, especially in the Kurdish provinces. The CPT’s experts indicate those cases of electric shock treatment, beating up and sleep deprivation against prisoners in preliminary detention have been reported.

In the course of two visits to Turkey, in March and then in September 2002, the CPT experts questioned a large number of people who had been placed in detention in the Kurdish province of Diyarbekir, which was under a State of Emergency until November 2002. “About half of the people questioned stated that they had suffered ill-treatment during their detention in police or gendarmerie premises” the CPT affirms in this report, published with the agreement of the Ankara authorities.

The experts of this European organisation noted in particular “blows, the compression of testicles, spraying with jets of icy water naked prisoners who were then kept in the cold, sleep deprivation, being kept standing for prolonged periods (…) electric shocks applied to the toes, the genitals and/or the ears”. In view of this body of information, the CPT demands that an enquiry be organised, by an independent judicial organisation, on the methods used by the anti-terrorist departments of the Diyarbekir police to question prisoners being detained.

The committee denounces, moreover, the non-confidentiality of the medical examinations undergone by the prisoners. Thus “people who have suffered ill-treatment can easily be dissuaded from informing the doctor, and the doctor can easily be dissuaded from raising the matter with the detainee. In addition (…) certain doctors who have insisted on reporting injuries observed have been subjected to threats and/or been transferred to other posts” the experts point out.
 

• TURKISH COURT ACQUITS  TRIBAL  CHIEF IMPLICATED IN  SUSURLUK  SCANDAL. The former DYP member of parliament, Sedat Bucak, implicated in the Susurluk scandal (Editors Note: The car accident  in the town of Susurluk in 1996  that brought to light the collusions between the Mafia, the police and politicians in Turkey) was acquitted, on 26 June, by the Istanbul Criminal Court in the course of the second hearing of his case.

The Prosecutor, Orhan Erbey, non only called for acquittal of Sedat Bucak but, in addition, did not fail to praise this tribal chief’s collaboration with the State, particularly praising his role as key witness in the first trial of the DEP Members of Parliament who, in their case, were sentenced to 15 years jail without ever being allowed to cross examine S. Bucak.