Reports

August 1994 marked the tenth anniversary of the bloody conflict in largely Kurdish southeast Turkey between the Turkish government and the separatist Kurdistan Worker’s Party guerrilla movement.

An investigation of the prevalence of forcible virginity control exams and the role of the government in conducting or tolerating such exams, this report cites several separate incidents in the spring of 1992 when young females committed suicide after authorities ordered them to submit to examinations of their hymens.

Twenty-one people died in suspicious circumstances while in police custody in 1993. These deaths took place in police or gendarmarie stations throughout Turkey during the interrogation phase of investigations. They follow on the deaths of at least 17 people who died while under interrogation in police custody in 1992.

The Free Media Seminar of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe is taking place at a critical time. First, because developments throughout the region suggest that protection for media freedoms fall well short of international standards.

Under the anti-terror law, which was introduced in 1991, many left-wing and pro-Kurdish journalists, writers and publishers continue to be tried, and many go on to be sentenced to prison terms and fines.

This report describes some of the events that have taken place since Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel’s coalition government took office in November 1991 and their effects on the Turkish Kurds in southeast Turkey.

In 1992, 16 people died in the custody of police or gendarmes. An extraordinarily high percentage of these suspects were said by police to have committed suicide and three of the alleged suicides were children between the ages of 13 and 16.

A year has passed since Prime Minister Demirel’s coalition government, committed to human rights reforms, took office in Turkey — a period long enough to produce significant change.

The Greek community in Turkey is dwindling, elderly and frightened. Its population has declined from about 110,000 at the time of the signing of the Lausanne Treaty in 1923 to about 2,500 today. Its fear stems from an appalling history of pogroms and expulsions suffered at the hands of the Turkish government.

Helsinki Watch has documented scores of cases of torture in Turkey since 1982, and Turkish lawyers who represent detainees claim that police routinely torture between 80 and 90 percent of political suspects and about 50 percent of ordinary criminal suspects, including children.