The shooting deaths this week of at least four demonstrators by Turkish police signals an alarming deterioration in the human rights situation in southeastern Turkey, Human Rights Watch said today. Growing police violence against demonstrators jeopardizes the significant human rights progress that Turkey has achieved in recent years.
“Turkish police appear to have used excessive force in the shooting deaths of four unarmed demonstrators,” said Holly Cartner, Europe and Central Asia director of Human Rights Watch. “If security forces are allowed to revert to their old ways with impunity, not only will more lives be lost, but the achievements of the past few years will also be squandered.”
According to eyewitness reports, police shot and killed İsmail Bartin, Ersin Mengeç, Abdülhaluk Geylani and Gıyasettin Avcı during violent disturbances following a press conference in the town of Yüksekova on November 15. Eyewitnesses reported that police abruptly used force to disperse people who had assembled to listen to the reading of a press release issued by the Democratic People’s Party (DEHAP) about events in the nearby town of Şemdinli.
In Şemdinli on November 9, local people had apprehended two army intelligence officers who appear to have been involved in a grenade attack on a Kurdish bookshop that killed one civilian.
The exact circumstances of the deaths of the demonstrators in Yüksekova are not known, but they appear to be part of a growing pattern of excessive force by police. After the reading of DEHAP’s press release, gendarmes apparently drove an armoured car at the assembled crowd to disperse them, injuring two women. The angry crowd threw stones at the security forces. When another armoured car crashed into an electricity pylon, the crowd seized some security force members and beat them. Other armoured vehicles, police and gendarmes opened fire on the crowd, killing four and wounding nine, including two juveniles. Security forces claimed that firearms were used against them, but the seven wounded members of the security forces were either beaten by the crowd or hit by stones.
It is by no means clear that the assembly in Yüksekova was, in its early stages, unlawful. In this case the security forces need not have dispersed it. The United Nations Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials require that law enforcement officials who are dispersing assemblies that are unlawful but nonviolent must avoid force or, where that is not practicable, use minimum force.
In this case, Yüksekova police chose the violent and potentially lethal path of driving armoured vehicles into the assembled crowd. Once the scene had become a street confrontation between angry demonstrators and security forces, police used some non-lethal means, including tear gas. But then, without giving the warning stipulated by the U.N. Principles, the police resorted to the use of firearms. The principles state that where the lawful use of force and firearms is unavoidable, law enforcement officials shall use restraint and act in proportion to the seriousness of the offence.
The crowd was certainly attacking the police with stones, but there is no evidence beyond security force statements that the crowd was using firearms. If the aim was to clear the streets, automatic gunfire was clearly a disproportionate means to achieve this end. The high casualty rate suggests that security forces were not restrained in their use of lethal force, and were at least indiscriminate.
The fact that two of the victims, Bartin and Mengeç, both died as a result of multiple bullet wounds to the chest and heart suggest that security forces were shooting to kill. Intentional lethal use of firearms may only be made when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life.
These shootings are the most recent in a spate of police killings of demonstrators. In the past year, Turkish police have repeatedly used disproportionate and lethal force to break up demonstrations that turn violent. Television images of police assaulting non-violent demonstrators with batons and pepper gas on International Women’s Day earned a sharp statement from visiting European Union delegates in March. Police and gendarmes have shot dead a total of eight demonstrators this year, including the deaths in Yüksekova.
“In the last three years, police in Turkey had improved their response to demonstrations, but this has been a bloody year,” said Cartner. “The government needs to send a clear message that the use of excessive force by its security forces will not be tolerated and will be punished.”
The grenade attack in Şemdinli on November 9 killed one man, Mehmet Korkmaz, and wounded eight others. A man running away from the scene, a “confessor” (former PKK member who has turned state’s evidence), together with two gendarmes in plainclothes, were apprehended by local inhabitants. The local people handed the three men over to the police, but refused to move away from the scene, fearing that the authorities might attempt to destroy evidence.
Instead the locals searched the back of the gendarmes’ car, where they discovered three Kalashnikov assault rifles, a hand grenade, and maps not only of the bookshop but also of an area of Şemdinli where a much larger bomb had exploded on November 1. When the local prosecutor came to the crime scene, a gendarmerie armoured vehicle opened fire on the crowd, killing one member of the public, Ali Yılmaz, and wounding four others.
In recent months, there have been numerous bombing incidents in the region, and local human rights organizations have questioned whether the security forces are behind this pattern; 17 such bombings have occurred since July according to a parliamentary question tabled by the opposition Republican People’s Party.
The officer in charge of the armoured vehicle and the man who allegedly threw the grenade in Şemdinli were arrested, but the two plainclothes gendarmes were released by the public prosecutor. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan has said that the incident will be investigated without bias. However, the Office of the Chief of General Staff merely noted there were allegations that soldiers were involved in the grenade attack and shooting, and that the matter was now in the hands of the judiciary.
The Turkish judiciary has an appalling record in investigating security force abuses. The European Court of Human Rights has noted in scores of judgments that prosecutors are reluctant to indict or even question members of the security forces.
Human Rights Watch has written to the Turkish government urging a prompt and impartial investigation into the attack in Şemdinli, and into the deaths of the four demonstrators in Yüksekova.
