The European Union has failed to take full advantage of an important
opportunity to promote human rights reform in Turkey, Human Rights Watch said.
The E.U. today published its Accession Partnership for Turkey, essentially a list of steps Turkey must take to gain admission to the E.U. Human Rights Watch said while the document contained much that was of value, it had a disappointing lack of detail in key areas such as safeguards against torture, and protection of freedom of expression.
"The E.U. missed an unparalleled opportunity to apply leverage," said Jonathan Sugden, Human Rights Watch's researcher on Turkey. "This is a disappointment. The Partnership Agreement should have had unambiguous benchmarks for human rights progress."
A Human Rights Watch report issued in September urged the E.U. commission to draw up a Partnership Agreement with clear benchmarks to signal that the E.U. was serious about Turkey's admission. The report recommended a detailed program to resolve Turkey's appalling human rights record.
Since the 1980 military coup, thousands of people in Turkey have been tortured; 450 people have died in police custody; at least 140 people have "disappeared;" and more than two thousand people have been killed in political killings and extrajudicial executions. Even according to official figures, nearly half a million people have been displaced during clearances in mainly Kurdish villages when gendarmes ordered, threatened or burned villagers out of their homes. Police torture is still commonplace, and victims include children. Sexual assault or rape of women and men in custody are frequently reported. Sexual assault or rape of women and men in custody are frequently reported. Courts continue to sentence Turkish citizens to terms of imprisonment for voicing their non-violent opinions, and to shut down political parties for challenging the dominant ideology.
The Accession Partnership covers torture, the constraints on freedom of expression and association, and repression of civil society in overly broad terms, which the Turkish authorities may use to continue their traditional policy of delay and prevarication.
On the issue of language rights, the Accession Partnership document avoids mention of specific minorities but does set clear goals— the right to mother tongue broadcasting within a year and mother tongue education in the medium term—approximately four years. The document is also firm on abolition of the death penalty, and lifting Turkey's anomalous reservations to the 1951 Refugee Convention.
The single most important safeguard against torture is the abolition of incommunicado detention -- that is, police detention without access to legal counsel. This was recommended by the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture and the UN Committee against Torture nearly a decade ago and still has not happened. The document should have spelled out this problem as a matter of urgency.
On freedom of expression, the document goes little further than the E.U.'s earlier sincere but vague solicitations. There is no specific mention either of the right of conscientious objection or the headscarf ban which is denying thousands of women access to university education. The extensive violations committed by the Turkish security forces and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) during the sixteen-year conflict in the southeast are left unresolved and treated as a conveniently closed chapter.
Human Rights Watch urges the Accession Partnership for Turkey to be strengthened by establishing clear benchmarks in the following areas:
Incommunicado detention should be abolished in law and practice. This means revising the Criminal Procedure Code to give all prisoners access to legal counsel from the first moments of police custody. Clear penalties should be demanded for police and gendarmerie officers who try to circumvent regulations. Blindfolding of detainees should be explicitly forbidden.
Permission should be given for the publication of the remaining eight reports of the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture on their visits to Turkey.
Prosecutors and judges must immediately stop indicting or sentencing people for the expression of their non-violent opinions. Current practice contravenes Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which supersedes domestic law (according to the Turkish Constitution). Those imprisoned for their non-violent opinions should be promptly released and their political rights restored. The omission of conscientious objectors and women denied access to education because of the headscarf ban should also be addressed in the Accession Partnership.
The Turkish government should institute a full commission of inquiry, composed of independent experts, into the human rights and humanitarian law violations committed during the course of the fifteen year conflict with the PKK. Where violations are established to have taken place, those responsible should be brought to justice, and the victims compensated.
