Author: Zaman Australia

Turkey’s Council of Forensic Medicine (ATK) on Tuesday presented to court its report on ailing Kurdish politician Aysel Tuğluk, saying she displayed symptoms of mild cognitive impairment and was fit to remain in prison, the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported, citing Turkish media.

According to the report, which was sent to the Ankara 22nd Criminal Court, Tuğluk is in full command of her mental faculties. It added that Tuğluk could take care of herself and should continue treatment under a doctor’s supervision in prison.

Tuğluk suffers from dementia and is currently kept in a maximum security prison in Kocaeli province. Earlier this year the court ordered that she be observed by the ATK for a maximum three-week period. However, the ATK sent her back to prison after three days.

As the number of sick prisoners dying in prison has increased, doubts about the credibility and independence of the council have grown, as the institution is affiliated with the Ministry of Justice.

Tuğluk was arrested on December 29, 2016, when she was deputy co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), along with seven other Kurdish opposition politicians. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of serving as an executive of a terrorist organization and taking orders from Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed group listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the European Union and the US.

Tuğluk has denied the accusations, saying she never called for violence and always sought democratic solutions to problems the Kurds faced.

On September 5, 2021, her lawyers issued a written statement saying Tuğluk was sick and was denied access to proper healthcare in prison, without disclosing her illness. It was later revealed she was showing symptoms of dementia.

Several human rights organizations have objected to the ATK report, saying she was sent back to prison to die. Exiled journalist Can Dündar said on social media the decision only aimed to inflict further suffering.

Barış Yarkadaş, a former lawmaker from the Republican People’s Party, said he could not believe the ATK could make such a heartless decision.

Social media group 1000 Women for Aysel Tuğluk said they would organize a demonstration against Tuğluk’s continued incarceration.

“The ATK’s job is to make fair and ethically appropriate decisions. What they have done today is political and violates human rights. Therefore, we demand the immediate release of Aysel Tuğluk,” they said.

In January several nongovernmental organizations in a letter urged the United Nations to take “urgent” action for the release of Tuğluk, saying her health had deteriorated considerably.

The letter urged UN rapporteurs and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention for urgent action to intervene against ongoing rights violations targeting Tuğluk, specifically asking them “to urge the Turkish Government to immediately release Aysel Tuğluk and other severely ill prisoners who are not fit to remain in prison in compliance with Turkey’s domestic and international law obligations” and “to communicate the concerns in relation to violation of prisoners’ rights to medical services and to investigate the circumstances behind the refusal to release severely ill prisoners.”

The letter also urged UN rapporteurs and the working group “to invite the Turkish Government to ensure that all prisons in Turkey have an adequate number of medical staff, including doctors and that they work freely without any undue interference with their work” and “to ensure the Turkish Government allows greater accountability and transparency of prison living conditions by enabling visits and inspections from human rights groups and nongovernmental entities.”

According to her lawyer, Tuğluk was issued a report by a medical board comprising nine physicians at Kocaeli University Hospital stating that she couldn’t survive on her own. Tuğluk was denied release after a brief examination, despite the medical board report.

Human rights activists and opposition politicians have frequently criticized authorities for not releasing critically ill prisoners so they can seek proper treatment. Human rights defender and HDP deputy Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu said ill prisoners were not released until they were at the point of no return.

HDP deputy Züleyha Gülüm said political prisoners were the most disadvantaged and were often the least likely to be released in the event of a serious health problem.

A number of Republicans in the US Senate have expressed support for former Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter Freedom, an outspoken critic of human rights violations in Turkey and China’s treatment of Uyghurs, while criticizing the NBA for failing to also stand behind his cause, local media reported on Thursday.

After the Celtics traded Freedom to the Houston Rockets on Feb. 10, the Rockets unceremoniously waived Kanter Freedom within minutes, and no other team picked him up.

According to a report by The Hill on Wednesday, Kanter Freedom told PBS’s “Firing Line” last week that his professional basketball career would likely be cut short because of his criticism of China’s policies.

Last year he slammed China’s leader Xi Jinping and labeled China’s Tibet policy “cultural genocide.”

He has also called out the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang region, putting special focus on products made in the region with forced labor.

Kanter Freedom on Wednesday attended a Senate Republican closed-door lunch hosted by Utah Sen. Mike Lee, chairman of the Senate Republican Steering Committee.

“[It’s] an honor to host Enes Freedom today. He has taken a noble stand against genocide in China. [I’m] proud he’s an American and taking a stand for freedom!” Lee tweeted on Wednesday.

Two journalists convicted of violating Turkey’s state secrets law said on Tuesday they were returning to prison after losing an appeal against their jail sentences, Agence France-Presse reported.

The 2020 trial concerned a news report alleging that a Turkish intelligence officer was killed in Libya after Ankara provided support to the UN-recognized government in Tripoli.

The İstanbul court in September 2020 sentenced Aydın Keser, Ferhat Çelik and Murat Ağırel, who works for the Yeniçağ daily, to four years and eight months in jail each on charges of violating the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MİT) law.

It sentenced then OdaTV editor-in-chief Barış Pehlivan and reporter Hülya Kılınç to three years and nine months each on the same charges.

Ağırel and Pehlivan tweeted on Tuesday that they were returning to jail.

“A third time… We’re here, we’re going… Goodbye for now,” Pehlivan tweeted, with a selfie in front of what appeared to be İstanbul’s main Çağlayan courthouse.

“I am going to prison again because I called the sons who were martyred for the homeland martyrs,” Ağırel tweeted.

“People who cannot deny anything I have written until now think they can silence me with injustice,” he added.

Turkey comes under frequent criticism from rights defenders, who say Ankara undermines media freedom by jailing journalists and shutting down critical media outlets.

Reporters Without Borders placed Turkey 153rd out of 180 nations on its Press Freedom Index for 2021.

Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay has called the victims of a massive purge of state institutions “terrorists,” accusing opposition parties of having plans for the reinstatement of former civil servants who were removed from their jobs following a coup attempt in Turkey on July 15, 2016, the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported.

“May I ask who these people are? They are terrorists. Opposition parties should tell people that they will reinstate these terrorists to state institutions,” Oktay said in an interview with the private TV channel A Haber.

Following the abortive putsch, the Turkish government declared a state of emergency and carried out a massive purge of state institutions under the pretext of an anti-coup fight. More than 130,000 public servants were summarily removed from their jobs for alleged membership in or relationships with “terrorist organizations” by emergency decree-laws subject to neither judicial nor parliamentary scrutiny.

The government also shut down 164 media organizations, 1,058 educational institutions and 1,769 NGOs.

Former public servants were not only fired from their jobs; they were also prohibited from working again in the public sector and getting a passport. The government also made it difficult for them to work formally in the private sector. Notes were put on the social security database about dismissed public servants to deter potential employers.

According to a joint report by the Justice for Victims Platform and Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, a human rights advocate and lawmaker from the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the biggest problem the purge victims and their families have been facing is economic hardship (97.9 percent) followed by psychological problems (88.6 percent), loss of social prestige and social exclusion (83.7 percent), the disintegration of social circles (83.1 percent), unemployment/lack of employment (80.4 percent) and a lack of social security benefits (73.2 percent).

The most recent report on the issue published by Veli Ağbaba from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) states that at least 46 former public servants have died by suicide in Turkey, with the figure increasing to as many as 100 cases of suicide among dismissed civil servants in other sources.

CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu said in August that he would reinstate all former officials removed from their jobs by emergency decree-laws known as KHKs if they win the next general election in June 2023, “unless they were involved in terrorism.”

“An official apology should be made to the purge victims, and pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages should be paid for the ordeal they were subjected to,” lawmaker Muazzez Orhan Işık from HDP said in late September.

The Supreme Court of Appeals on Wednesday issued a final verdict for a former member and sentenced him to 12 years, nine months’ imprisonment for alleged membership in the Gülen movement, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency reported.

The Turkish government accuses the faith-based Gülen movement of masterminding a coup attempt on July 15, 2016 and labels it a “terrorist organization,” although the movement strongly denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.

One of the pieces of evidence against former judge Dursun Murat Cevher was his alleged use of the ByLock smart phone application.

Turkey considers ByLock, once widely available online, a secret tool of communication among supporters of the Gülen movement since the July 2016 failed coup, despite the lack of any evidence that ByLock messages were related to the abortive putsch, leading to the arrest of thousands who were using it.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled in June in the case of a former police officer that use of the ByLock application is not an offense in itself and does not constitute sufficient evidence for an arrest.

The UN Human Rights Council’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention also stated in October 2018 that detention, arrest and conviction based on ByLock use in Turkey violated of Articles 19, 21 and 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

According to a statement from the interior ministry in March 2019, 95,310 people were charged over alleged use of the ByLock application. In its technical report, which courts use as basis for their decisions, Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) stated that 60,473 defendants had at least one message posted using ByLock while 34,837 defendants had not posted any message using the application.

Rıza Türmen, a former judge at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and head of the Ankara Bar Association’s human rights committee, has resigned from the bar due to its refusal to publish a report on allegations of torture made by detainees held at a police detention center, local media reported.

According to a report by the TR724 news website last week, people who were detained due to alleged links to the Gülen movement, a faith-based group inspired by Turkish Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, were subjected to torture at a police detention center in Ankara.

TR724 said 300 people have been detained in the last month in police raids across Turkey as part of investigations overseen by the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office.

Some of the detainees were beaten and forced to sign false confessions while in police custody, TR724 reported, citing their families and lawyers.

After receiving complaints of torture and mistreatment, lawyers from the Ankara Bar Association’s human rights committee interviewed the detainees and compiled their findings in a report.

According to the report citing the lawyers’ findings, detainees said they were subjected to beatings, forced nudity, torture involving the use of water and threats of rape.

The report was presented to the management of the Ankara Bar Association; however, they decided not to publish the report, opting to instead file a criminal complaint with the public prosecutor’s office.

The bar association’s decision sparked indignation among the lawyers who had drafted it, and six lawyers on the human rights committee resigned in protest.

Committee chair Türmen joined his colleagues and submitted his resignation from the bar on Wednesday.

Türmen represented Turkey at the ECtHR between 1998 and 2008.

The bar’s president, Kemal Koranel, denies allegations of censorship.

After an abortive putsch in 2016, ill-treatment and torture became widespread and systematic in Turkish detention centers. Lack of condemnation from higher officials and a readiness to cover up allegations rather than investigate them have resulted in widespread impunity for the security forces.