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RECOMMENDATIONS

Recommendations to the Turkish Government
During the period 1984-99, Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) attacks displaced a substantial number of villagers in the southeast. However, a large body of documentary evidence and judgments at the European Court of Human Rights indicate that Turkish state security forces were responsible for the majority of the population movements, and that these were carried out with numerous violations of human rights, including extra-judicial executions, "disappearances," and torture.

The Turkish government should now:

    · Publish comprehensive information about the progress of returns, including a verifiable list of communities that have returned and those that have not.

    · Publish detailed information about programs for return, including the names of villages open for return or temporarily closed to return, project aims and objectives, government departments responsible for the returns, budgets, and progress updates.

    · Establish a specialist agency dedicated to implementing the return of internally displaced persons.

    · Set up a planning forum with representatives of governmental, nongovernmental and intergovernmental organizations with relevant expertise, as well as representatives of displaced villagers. The forum should develop a return program that will ensure that internally displaced communities can return to their homes in safety and dignity and can resume their livelihoods. All return programs should be consistent with the U.N. Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and respect the rights of internally displaced communities. Such an agency should inquire into allegations of appropriation of land by village guards, and take steps to end this practise, including informing the local prosecution service to initiate legal action as necessary.

    · Take measures at all levels of government to stop the harassment of internally displaced persons, the recently returned, and those who assist them.

    · Abolish the village guard system.

    · Permit villagers to return to their own homes unless there are legitimate security reasons to prevent this, such as continued armed conflict or the presence of landmines that would endanger civilian lives.

    · Clear landmines from villages and surrounding farmland, and give villagers documentary evidence that their village has been cleared of mines and munitions before they return.

    · Ensure that infrastructure for villages and hamlets is restored at least to the standard prior to their destruction and evacuation, at state cost.

    · Where villages are inaccessible for security reasons or because they have been mined, pay appropriate levels of compensation, including maintenance for the internally displaced, and ensure their access to health, education, and employment or other basis for an adequate standard of living.

    · Ensure unfettered access for nongovernmental organizations throughout the southeast, especially for national and international human rights and humanitarian nongovernmental organizations.

    · Publish the secret "Action Plan for the East and Southeast" adopted by the National Security Council in May 2000.

    · Establish an interim program for practical and financial support of villagers before, during, and after return, without prejudice to subsequent litigation they may open in the courts.

Recommendations to Intergovernmental Organizations with an Interest in Displacement, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)

    · Urge the Turkish government to set up a planning forum involving interested local and international nongovernmental and intergovernmental organizations and representatives of displaced villagers. The forum should put in place a return program that will ensure that internally displaced persons can return to their homes in safety and dignity and can resume their livelihoods. All return programs should be consistent with the U.N. Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and respect the rights of internally displaced persons.

    · Assure the Turkish government of their willingness to contribute their expertise and experience to assist with the design and implementation of a fair, safe, and sustainable program of return.

    · Assist the Turkish government in obtaining funding for appropriately designed and implemented programs that are consistent with the U.N. Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.

Recommendations to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe
Following a succession of judgments that found Turkish security forces responsible for destroying the property of villagers in the southeast, the European Court of Human Rights placed the responsibility for ensuring the return of those villagers and the restoration of their property on the shoulders of the Committee of Ministers. Since, as the Court has indicated, this pattern of village destruction was widespread, the Committee of Ministers has a further responsibility to the community of displaced villagers as a whole.

The Committee of Ministers should therefore:

    · Pass a resolution to make the continued displacement of hundreds of thousands of villagers from the southeast, the largest and most intractable problem remaining from the conflict of 1984-1999, a regular agenda item and press the Turkish government to implement a thorough return program, in line with the recommendations made by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe's Committee on Migration, Refugees and Demography.

    · Urge the Turkish government to set up a planning forum involving interested local and international nongovernmental and intergovernmental organizations and representatives of displaced villagers. The forum should put in place a return program that will ensure that internally displaced communities can return to their homes in safety and dignity and can resume their livelihoods. All return programs should be consistent with the U.N. Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and respect the rights of internally displaced communities.

    · Make supervision of the return program a regular agenda item of the Committee's meetings.

    · Assist the Turkish government in obtaining Council of Europe funding for appropriately designed and implemented programs that are consistent with the U.N. Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and respect the rights of internally displaced communities.

Recommendations to the World Bank
The World Bank has refused to fund Turkey's Village Return and Rehabilitation Project, but is considering support for the Turkish government's Village-Townships (köykent), another rural development scheme that extends to the southeast. The World Bank has stated that it will not support Village-Townships in areas where displacement has occurred.

The World Bank should:

    · Maintain its current policy of withholding support for any Village-Township projects in southeast Turkey that are not consistent with the U.N. Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, or that may indirectly facilitate other projects that are contrary to the Guiding Principles.

    · Use its influence to encourage the Turkish government to redesign its return program in accordance with the U.N. Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, and to develop projects that the World Bank and other international bodies could feel confident in supporting.

    · To this end, urge the Turkish government to set up a planning forum involving interested local and international nongovernmental and intergovernmental organizations and representatives of displaced villagers. The forum should put in place a return program that will ensure that internally displaced communities can return to their homes in safety and dignity and can resume their livelihoods. All return programs should be consistent with the U.N. Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and respect the rights of internally displaced communities.

    · Assist the Turkish government with funding for appropriately designed and implemented return programs that are consistent with the U.N. Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and respect the rights of internally displaced communities.

Recommendations to the European Union
The E.U.'s requirements from Turkey for accession include the short-term development of "a comprehensive approach to reduce regional disparities, and in particular to improve the situation in the South-East, with a view to enhancing economic, social and cultural opportunities for all citizens" and over the longer term, implementation of reforms in conformity with the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Meeting these requirements would necessitate Turkey's ensuring the safe return of the internally displaced, as is reflected in the annual Regular Reports on Turkey's Progress towards Accession, which mention the internally displaced and quote government figures on returns.

The E.U. should:

    · Not rely on unsubstantiated and unverifiable Turkish government statements concerning the return process, but use its high level of access to carry out field research in the region that would contribute to the sum of information about returns through the annual Regular Report.

    · Closely monitor the situation of the internally displaced in the cities and in the countryside after return, and pool information with other intergovernmental bodies and interested nongovernmental organizations.

    · Urge the Turkish government to set up a planning forum involving interested local and international nongovernmental and intergovernmental organizations and representatives of displaced villagers. The forum should put in place a return program that will ensure that internally displaced communities can return to their homes in safety and dignity and can resume their livelihoods. All return programs should be consistent with the U.N. Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and respect the rights of internally displaced communities.

    · Not finance return or resettlement projects in southeast Turkey if they are not consistent with the U.N. Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, or if they indirectly facilitate other projects that are contrary to the Guiding Principles.

    · Assist the Turkish government with funding for appropriately designed and implemented return programs that are consistent with the U.N. Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and respect the rights of internally displaced communities.

Recommendations to E.U. Member Governments and the U.S. Government
Governments that have strong bilateral relations with Turkey and are likely to be the source of foreign investment in development and reconstruction in the southeast, should:

    · Urge the Turkish government to set up a planning forum involving interested local and international nongovernmental and intergovernmental organizations and representatives of displaced villagers. The forum should put in place a return program that will ensure that internally displaced communities can return to their homes in safety and dignity and can resume their livelihoods. All return programs should be consistent with the U.N. Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and respect the rights of internally displaced communities.

    · Not finance return or resettlement projects in southeast Turkey if they violate the U.N. Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, or if they indirectly facilitate other projects that violate the principles.

    · Assist the Turkish government with funding for appropriately designed and implemented return programs that are consistent with the U.N. Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and respect the rights of internally displaced communities.

    · The U.S. government, in its annual State Department report on human rights practices, should not rely on unsubstantiated and unverifiable government statements concerning the return process, and should use its high level of access to carry out field research in the region that would contribute to the sum of information about returns.

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