{"id":438,"date":"2008-06-29T18:10:24","date_gmt":"2008-06-29T15:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=438"},"modified":"2014-01-01T19:53:48","modified_gmt":"2014-01-01T17:53:48","slug":"turkey-has-trouble-facing-up-to-its-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2008\/06\/29\/turkey-has-trouble-facing-up-to-its-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey has trouble facing up to its past"},"content":{"rendered":"
Hanim Tosun last saw her husband Fehmi in 1995 as he was being dragged into a car outside their home by men in civilian clothes who she is convinced were government agents.<\/div>\n
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zur\u00fcck <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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weiter <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Foto: AP<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Hanim Tosun’s husband allegedly disappeared under police custody and she last saw him in 1995 as suspected state agents in civilian clothes dragged him into a car outside their home. <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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His disappearance is among hundreds of old allegations of state-linked abductions and murders in a country that \u2013 even as it seeks entry into Europe’s club of democracies \u2013 seems unable or unwilling to fully confront its history of authoritarianism.<\/div>\n
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Schlagworte<\/div>\n
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Turkey<\/span> abductions<\/span> murders<\/span> disappearance<\/span> history<\/span> authoritarian<\/span> government<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The culprits in these cases will probably never be identified. Back then, investigations were few and convictions fewer, and now there is little appetite to delve into the ugly past.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Turkey has curbed the worst excesses of its security forces, with the help of Western-style reforms and a drop in combat with Kurdish rebels and other militants. But authorities still deny official involvement in 1990s-era \u201edisappearances\u201c or summary executions of Kurds and leftists allegedly taken into government custody \u2013 who are estimated to number 800 by one Turkish rights group.<\/div>\n
Some families of the disappeared still are pursuing the cases, but they are a minority since challenging the Turkish state can lead to prosecution and jail time.<\/div>\n
\u201eThis cause will never end for me,\u201c said Hanim Tosun, whose husband had spent three years in prison for links to the Kurdish rebel group PKK before his abduction. \u201eIf this is a state run by the rule of law, then they should return the body.\u201c<\/div>\n
Last month, she attended a forum on the missing held by the Human Rights Association, a Turkish nongovernment organization. Tosun belonged to the Saturday Mothers, a group that gathered weekly holding up photos of the missing in protests similar to those held by relatives of those who vanished in the so-called Dirty War in Argentina in the 1970s and ’80s.<\/div>\n
The Turkish group ended rallies in 1999 after a police crackdown. The demonstrators, who were sometimes arrested, claimed the publicity contributed to a virtual end to such disappearances.<\/div>\n
The European Union says Turkey, which has a history of military coups, must improve its human rights record if it wants to be a member. Progress has been notable if uneven. Turkey is torn between the reformist push for transparency and an entrenched tendency to override the rights of individuals who are seen as threats to the state.<\/div>\n
Elements of this conflict are evident in Turkey’s current political divide, in which the top court, a bastion of the secular elite, is considering whether to ban the Islam-oriented ruling party, which has a strong majority in parliament. Both sides in the dispute claim to be champions of the democratic ideals enshrined in the constitution, itself the byproduct of a 1980 military coup.<\/div>\n
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GRAFIK<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/span>Two actors painted in blue enact a scene of a abduction in front of the European Parliament in Belgium. Amnesty International was organizing the action to mark the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The U.S. State Department said in March that there were no reports of \u201epolitically motivated disappearances\u201c in Turkey last year, but cited other problems including torture and some instances of unlawful killings by security forces. The European Commission has said \u201elegislative safeguards\u201c were improving Turkey’s human rights situation, citing a \u201edownward trend\u201c in torture cases. \u201eImpunity remains an area of concern,\u201c a European report said. \u201eThere is a lack of prompt, impartial and independent investigations into allegations of human rights violations by members of security forces.\u201c<\/p>\n

Turkey has said state-sponsored abuses were not systematic at the height of the guerrilla war in the 1990s, despite evidence of atrocities by both sides. Officials suggested that some who disappeared did so by choice as members of underground groups and that others perished in internal conflicts between rival rebel factions.<\/div>\n
\u201eAuthorities are doing everything they can to find people who were reported missing by their families,\u201c a senior Interior Ministry official said on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media.<\/div>\n
In some cases, the government has agreed to pay settlements and acknowledged inadequate inquiries. Families that took these deals had mixed feelings, pleased with winning a concession but aware that the government considered the cases closed to deeper inquiry.<\/div>\n
The family of Fehmi Tosun went to the European Court of Human Rights, whose decisions are binding on Turkey. The court withdrew from the case after Turkey agreed to pay Euro 40,000 in a so-called friendly settlement.<\/div>\n
Tosun was grabbed around 7 p.m. on Oct. 19, 1995, and his wife provided the license plate of the car to police. She was alerted to the abduction by one of her children, and cited witnesses as saying the kidnappers had walkie talkies.<\/div>\n
\u201eI went out to the balcony and saw their shadows,\u201c Hanim Tosun said. \u201eThen I saw a white car. My husband was being dragged into it. He raised his head and called for help, saying that they were kidnapping him and going to kill him. … He was trying not to get in the car. One of the men had a gun. My son ran downstairs. I did the same too, but I was slower.\u201c<\/div>\n
The family of Hasan Ocak, a leftist with alleged links to illegal groups, last spoke to him on March 21, 1995, when he telephoned to say he would bring fish home for dinner. His body, with signs of torture, was found in a cemetery two months later.<\/div>\n
Ocak disappeared during a period of deadly clashes between police and protesters in Istanbul. Detainees later said they had seen him at the anti-terrorist branch of the security forces in the city. Ocak had previously been detained and tortured, according to his family.<\/div>\n
In 2004, Europe’s human rights court said Ocak’s family should be paid Euro 25,000 because Turkey had failed to adequately investigate his death, but added it could not conclude that the state had killed him. Like Tosun’s family, Ocak’s family took the money, but still argued that justice still had not been achieved.<\/div>\n
\u201eWhat we wanted was prosecution of those who were really responsible,\u201c said Ocak’s sister, Maside. She said the ruling amounted to a political \u201egesture\u201c to a candidate for EU membership.<\/div>\n
\u201eIt is fortunate that we have a grave to visit because other people don’t even have that,\u201c said Maside.<\/div>\n
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Associated Press writers C. Onur Ant in Istanbul and Selcan Hacaoglu in Ankara contributed to this report.__._,_.___<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hanim Tosun last saw her husband Fehmi in 1995 as he was being dragged into a car outside their home by men in civilian clothes who she is convinced were government agents. zur\u00fcck weiter Foto: AP Hanim Tosun’s husband allegedly disappeared under police custody and she last saw him in 1995 as suspected state agents […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":179167,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[57],"class_list":["post-438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eu-members","tag-human-rights-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}