Source: The Washington Post Tuesday November 14, 1995

Author: Colman McCarthy

Title: The Torture That Turkey Fails to Advertise

Among the 120 nations run by goverments that torture their own people,

less than a third have human rights groups that operate recovery centers for

survivors. One of them is Turkey.

Since its founding in 1990, the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey has

provided rehabilitation services to more than 600 men and women who were

brutalized during or after state interrogation. The centers, which are

staffed mostly by volunteer psychiatrists and social workers, are located in

Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir and Adana.

Nothing in the current repressive climate suggests that the centers will

be soon running out of patients.

The United States is not an uninvolved onlooker. American arms merchants

feast on sales to the Turkish goverment, the occupier of Cyprus and an

overkill destroyer of Kurdish villages in the name of stopping Kurdistan

terrorists. Military aid totaled $450 million in 1993, including cluster

bombs.

In recent years, Turkish human rights workers have come to Congress to

supply information to those members who might have a concern or two that the

United States sends weapons to torturers in violation of the Foreign

Assistance Act. The latest visitor is Yavuz Onen, president of the Human

Rights Foundation of Turkey.

At the same time Onen was getting in to speak with Republican members of

the House- Reps. John Edward Porter (Ill.), Frank R. Wolf (Va.), Christopher

H. Smith(N.J.) and Benjamin A. Gilman (N.Y.)- the Turkish government was

buying advertising space in U.S. publications to prettify itself. In an eight

page color spread in Time, the claim was made that "few countries are

changing faster or more positively than Turkey.: Four full pages of

self-promotion appeared also in The Washington Post.

The image campaign is defensive as well as offensive. Newspaper editorials

that criticize Turkey's state violence are routinely coutnered by

letter-to-the-editor from one embassy functionary or another. A recent letter

to the Los Angeles Times, started with the canned line: "Your Oct.16

editorial fails to accurately portray Turkey as a demorcratic and open

society." On Oct.17, The New York Times editorialized : "America Arms

Turkey's Repression." As fast as a whirling derish taking to the dance floor,

the Turkish ambassador wrote in to fantasize: " We work to promote political

stabilization and economic development."

These are tiresome plaints. The laughably inept efforts of the Turkish

government to deny its policies of torture are given the lie by friends of

victims sch as Yavuz Onen. The 57-year-old architect goes back a bit with the

governemnt's violence. In 1972, he was arrested and detained on a political

charge. He was beaten and electric shocks were applied to his genitals.

Late last year, Onen was charged with violating Turkey's 1991

anti-terrorism law. The offense involved the foundation;s report titled "

File of Torture: Deaths in Detention Places or Prisons (Sept.12,

1990-Sept.12, 1994)." Details were given on the deaths of 420 citizens while

in detention in those four years. Onen won an acquittal earlier this year.

In additon to offering facts to memebers of Congress about Turkey's human

rights abuses, Onen was in the United States for another reason: to receive

an award from the International Human Rights Group. The visibility of such a

prize offers protection of a sort. The government is likely to be cautious in

going after Onen now. He is no longer internationally anonymous, as are large

numbers of the tortured and detained.

John Salzburg of the Wasington office of the Center for Victims of Tortur,

the 10-year-old Minneapolis organization that is the largest of six programs

nationally that minister to many of the estimated 200,000 torture victioms

who have come to the United States over the last two decades, sees Onen as a

model of bravery: " He is obviously taking risks. He seems to be fearless in

his defense of human rights, particularly those of Kurds who are the most

vulneralble."

Someday, Yavuz Onen may receive another award: from a future prime

minister of a reformed Turkey honoring him for working so long and nobly to

elevate the governemt to its better self.