BACKGROUND

Many security detainees are ethnic Kurds who come from or are connected with the conflict in southeastern Turkey. Since 1984 the region has been the scene of armed conflict between government security forces and the PKK (Workers' Party of Kurdistan), "Partia Karkaren Kurdistan", a militant armed Kurdish group whose explicit claims range from complete independence to regional autonomy within Turkey. The conflict has been characterized by severe human rights abuses by both security forces and the PKK; by 1996 an estimated 21,000 security forces, civilians, and PKK members had been killed. In July 1987 ten provinces in the region were placed under emergency rule because of an increase in fighting. This strict decree gave security forces special powers, including the right to hold security detainees in incommunicado detention for up to thirty days and to restrict the press. On November 29, 1996, the Parliament of Turkey approved a four-month extension of the state of emergency-the twenty-ninth time-in the following provinces: Van; Bitlis; MuÕ; Tunceli; Diyarbakir; Siirt; BingÅl; Batman; Hakkari; Ô2rnak. Mardin, which had hitherto been under the state of emergency decree, was dropped from the list.

In 1991, an Anti-Terror Law was passed, which among other things resulted in the repression of non-violent expression-especially concerning debate on the Kurdish issue-and the imprisonment of writers and intellectuals. By 1992, the conflict in the southeast entered a new spiral. Torture and deaths in detention increased, as did disappearances under mysterious circumstances. A wave of so-called "actor unknown murders" struck Kurdish nationalist intellectuals and journalists and also suspected PKK members, with the number of such deaths rising to almost 1,200 between 1991 and 1994. A Turkish parliamentary commission investigation into these killings, leaked to the press in 1995, concluded that "`illegal formations' within the state bear some responsibility for mystery killings; they must be `cleansed'...and brought to justice."

The PKK assassinated those suspected of cooperating with the state, such as teachers, civil servants, and former PKK members. The government intensified a counterinsurgency campaign against the PKK, forcibly evacuating and burning rural villages. The majority of the more than 2,500 villages and hamlets depopulated in the region since 1984 are believed to be the result of this campaign. The PKK in turn launched attacks against both security forces and villages that had joined the government civil-defense "village guard" program, killing village guards and their families alike. In July 1996, the PKK started a campaign of suicide bombings using women disguised as pregnant or in pious clothing, a serious violation of international humanitarian law. An October 1994 Human Rights Watch/Helsinki report stated that,

Both Turkish security forces and PKK fighters are guilty of human rights abuses. Security forces operating in the southeast often make little distinction between civilians and the PKK members, and the PKK has continued its practice of brutally punishing any cooperation with state authorities.... In an effort to deprive the PKK of its logistic base of support, security forces forcibly evict villagers from their villages and sometimes destroy their homes. Torture and arbitrary detention often accompany such evictions. Security forces especially target those villagers who refuse to enter the village guard system or those who give food and shelter to the PKK fighters or are suspected of doing so.1

The U.S. State Department's annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1996 stated that, "Serious human rights problems continued....The situation in the southeast was of particular concern."2