Turkey: Hollow Promises for Kurds Displaced by Army

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Turkey: Hollow Promises for Kurds Displaced by Army 
EU Officials Visiting Ankara Must Press Turkey to
Reinvigorate Rights Reform

(Ankara, March 7, 2005) — On a key benchmark for European Union
membership, the Turkish government has failed to honor pledges to
help 378,000 displaced people, mainly Kurds, return home more than a
decade after the army forced them from their villages in southeastern
Turkey, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
On March 7-8, the European Union's commissioner for enlargement,
Olli Rehn, and a delegation of other high-level EU officials will visit
Ankara to discuss Turkey's membership. The EU officials should
press Turkey to take effective steps to facilitate the return of the
internally displaced persons (IDPs) to southeastern Turkey, where
Turkish security forces expelled hundreds of thousands from their
villages during an internal armed conflict that raged during the 1980s
and 1990s.

The 37-page report, "Still Critical: Prospects in 2005 for Internally
Displaced Kurds in Turkey," details how the Turkish government has
failed to implement measures for IDPs the United Nations
recommended nearly three years ago. Since the European Union
confirmed Turkey's membership candidacy in December, the Turkish
government appears to have shelved plans to enact those measures.

The report also details how Turkey has overstated its progress on
internal displacement in reports to the European Commission. Before
the European Union announced its decision to open membership talks,
the Turkish government sent the European Commission statistics
suggesting that the problem was well on its way to a solution—a
requirement Turkey must fulfill for full membership. Turkey claimed
that a third of the displaced had already returned, but Human Rights
Watch revealed that permanent returns in some places were less than a
fifth of the government's estimate.

"When we checked Turkey's figures on helping the displaced return
home, the numbers proved unreliable," said Rachel Denber, acting
executive director of Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia
Division. "Also, the bare figures don't convey how, thanks to
government inaction, villagers are returning to places that are
practically uninhabitable."

In southeastern Turkey, the government has failed to provide
infrastructure such as electricity, telephone lines and schools to
returning communities, and has not provided proper assistance with
house reconstruction.

"What's worse, the government's paramilitary village guards are
attacking and killing returnees in some parts of southeastern Turkey,"
added Denber.

Numerous intergovernmental bodies, as well as Turkish parliamentary
commissions, have condemned the village guard system, which was
devised in the 1980s to combat the illegal armed Kurdish Workers'
Party (PKK, now known as Kongra Gel). More than 58,000
paramilitary village guards remain on the government payroll.

Human Rights Watch said that the government's paramilitary guards
have killed 11 returned villagers in southeastern Turkey in the past
three years.

When the United Nations examined the plight of the displaced in
Turkey in 2002, it recommended that the government establish a
dedicated IDP unit, develop a partnership with the international
community for the resolution of IDP problems, and provide
compensation for the damages arising from the displacement. Nearly
three years later, the Turkish government has established no joint
projects with intergovernmental organizations, and there is still no
central governmental office responsible for IDPs. Last year, the
Turkish parliament passed a compensation law, but no payments have
yet been made.

It is now 18 years since Human Rights Watch warned of the
impending program of village destruction in a 1987 report during the
conflict in southeastern Turkey. The Turkish army duly carried out its
campaign with considerable violence, torturing, "disappearing" and
extrajudicially executing villagers in the process. Human Rights
Watch has since repeatedly criticized the Turkish government's empty
gestures in its return programs, issuing further reports in 1995 and
2002.

"The Turkish state tried to cover up what it did, and now it's
subjecting the displaced to years of delay," said Denber. "When EU
officials arrive in Ankara, they need to put the problem of the
displaced at the top of their agenda."

Human Rights Watch called on the European Union to press the
Turkish government to move ahead by immediately approving an IDP
project submitted last year by the United Nations Development
Program. In addition, Ankara needs to establish an agency for IDPs
that will take effective measures.

Since the European Union accepted Turkey's membership candidacy
in 1999, human rights reform has been a stop-start process in the
country. Turkey still has much to do on the protection of freedom of
_expression_, freedom of religion, language rights and protection against
torture.

"The predicament of the displaced is the most pressing concern, but
the Turkish government has lost focus on its reform task as a whole,"
Denber noted. "Last week we had three delegates observing trials of
Ragip Zarakolu and Fikret Baskaya, a publisher and a professor
threatened with imprisonment for expressing their nonviolent
opinions."

Preventing torture is another area where the Turkish government
seems to have run out of energy. Turkey has made substantial
improvement in recent years, but in order to combat persistent
incidents of torture and ill-treatment, the European Union
recommended in October 2004 that the Turkish government establish
independent monitoring of detention facilities. Five months later,
Turkey has still not implemented independent monitoring, even though
the necessary legal mechanisms are already in place.

In 2000, the European Union presented Turkey with a list of
benchmarks—known as the Accession Partnership—that Turkey had
to meet to become a full member. This was revised in 2003, and will
be revised again later this year.

To read Human Rights Watch's briefing paper "Eradicating Torture
in Turkey's Police Stations: Analysis and Recommendations,"
please go to:
http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/eca/turkey/2004/torture/

To read this document on the Human Rights Watch website
please go to:
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/03/07/turkey10261.htm