Bulletin de liaison etd'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Baszn Ozeti
how laws are applied. There is a prevailing
sense in Turkey that laws exist to protect a
"sacred" state from irrational individuals,
rather than to protect individuals from possible
arbitrary actions by the state. "It's up
to the courts to interpret the laws in accordance
with Turkey's commitment to join
the European Union and to abide by the
European Court of Human Rights," says
Jonathan Sugden of Human Rights Watch.
That view appears to be shared, unofficially,
by E.U. diplomats. While seeing Tas' acquitfal
as a positive step, Sugden is not sure
whether judges will now routinely refuse to
convict in freedom-of-expression cases.
For Turkey, that would be a big step on the
long road to Europe.
According to the Human Rights Foundation
of Turkey, scores of people were
convicted in freedom-of-expression cases
last year. Twenty-eight television and 32
radio stations were obliged to cease broadcasting
for a total of 3,786 days. The day before
Chomsky arrived in Turkey, a local radio
station in Diyarbakir, capital of the
southeastern Kurdish region, was ordered
off the air for a year for playing Kurdish
music that had an ideological content. Fifty
books were removed from store
shelves in 2001, and a number of
Kurdish musical cassettes were
banned. (While a constitutional
amendment allowing Kurdish
broadcasts was approved in October,
relevant laws have not yet
been rewritten.)
In most freedom-of-expression
cases, the alleged-offense was
more flagrant than the Chomsky
text that propelled Tas into court.
In that March 2oo1lecture, entitled
"Prospects for Peace in the
Middle East" and delivered in
Toledo, Ohio, the U.S. academic
referred to Turkey's crackdown on
its Kurdish population as "one of
the most severe human-rights atrocities of
the 1990s, continuing in fact." Chomsky
also laid much of the blame for the deaths
of tens of thousands of Kurds and the destruction
of their villages-in "massive ethnic
cleansing"-at the feet of the U.S.,
which provided Turkey with the military
wherewithal to suppress the Kurds.
With the world's television cameras
trained on them as their country hosted the
forum on harmony among civilizations, the
three-man state-security tribunal accepted
Tas' defense-that he bad intended only to
"contribute to academic debate." In
Turkey, that is no small victory. -Reported
fly AndNw
"'*-"1ItaIrbuI
HUNGER
STRIKES
"Death Is the Only Solution"
When Bobby Sandland nlneother
irish hunger strikers stMed
themseIYes to deaUJ 21)'8a'S.,
they caught the attention of much
of the world. The first of the Irish repubUcans
to die in the seven-month prote&tCMll'
conditions Inside their Northern irish prison,
Sands had refused food and mecIcaI
attention for 66 days. A/thougtl the grisly
deaths led to heightened poUticaI tensions
back In 1981, historIanssaythe hun(Ier
strikes also helped to peye the wayforthe
emergence ofSino fein es, "'*" poUtIcaI
force in Northern 1reJand...:8ndfor the
current peace process.
But what win the deaths of Cenglz
Soydas and his-so far-44 Turtclahcom.
rades come to mean? Soydas died last
March, on the l50th day of a prison
Mdeath fast" begun In October 2000. A
29-year-old university student who had
been sentenced to 15years In prison for
membership In a violent leftist organization,
Soyd8s was the first to die. Other
VICTORY? Hunger ader HuIye SImsek, oneof 45
protesters who have cIecIln the two-yeer .ndoff
prisoners and some outside supporters
joined him In protest and, later, In death.
According to the Turkish Justlee Ministry,
slightly more than 100 people are now on
hunger strike In a dozen prisons.
In contrast to the Irish situation,
many potential peacemakers are themselves
filled with despair. "There Is so
much III win that neither side believes
compromise Is possible," says Ortlan Pamuk,
a prominent novelist who had of.
fered his services as a negotIetor In late
2000. Echoed Yucel Sayman, head of the
Istanbul Bar AssocilItion: MBothsides
have decided that death Is the only solution."
Local journalists say the public has
lost heart and lost interest in the Mdeath
fast" and its cultlsh embrace of morbidity.
The strikers appear to have mastered the
science of dying. taking Uquid and vitamins
at a rate that permits them to waste
away at an Incredibly slow rate. As death
approaches, supportive Mcarers" comfort
them and encourage their families to accept
the legitimacy of the protest tactic.
The strike began in opposition to the
proposed transfer of prisoners accused or
convicted under Turkey's antiterrorism law
from large, dormltory-~ facilities to
new single- or triple-bunk eells. The authorities
reasoned that they could better
maintain order and discipline by reducing
the exposure of supporters of the Revolutionary
People's Uberation PartylFrontknown
as the DHKPIC-to other inmates
and to each other. However, the prisoners
expressed fear of being moved to smaller
~ eells, even in new, more comö
fortable buildings. The relative
isolation, they argued, would
N
leave them at the mercy of
their jailers, who could more
easily bully or torture them.
There is safety in numbers,
the inmates said, and they
were prepared to die to protect
themselves in a prison
system riddled with injustice.
That decision foreshadowed
a series of violent, related
incidents, including the security
forces' quashing of
protests throughout the prison
system and the forcible transfer
of inmates to the new Mf_
type" facilities. In the worst
clashes, In December 2000,
30 prisoners and two guards
were killed. In other Incidents,
two former Inmates blew themselves up
in suicide attacks on pollee, while family
members and other sympathizers joined
the Mdeathfast" WIth the toll of fatalities
inching upward and no resolution In sight,
the govemment ponders its options as It
continues to pursue reforms that It hopes
will please the E.U. MPeopIedon't have a
right to die," says Justice Minister Hikmet
Saml Turt