Turkey's Politics Explains Wexford Asylum Deaths
Press Statement from 'Solidarity with Hunger Strikers in Turkey'
10th December 2001
The deaths of eight people, some of Turkish origin, in a container truck in Wexford, should have focussed attention on the political conditions in Turkey which would force such families to flee to the West. Unfortunately little of this background information has appeared in the Irish media.
In Turkey most of the population live in abject poverty and the Turkish government goes to great lengths to cover up this fact. Recently the IMF has loaned Turkey $19billion to help it emerge from the crisis which has slashed the value of the lira in half, left hundreds of thousands of people jobless and plunged the nation into its worst recession since the Second World War. Unemployment and poverty have led to huge trade union protest marches in Turkey, most of which go unreported in the national and foreign press.
Despite the desperate attempts of the Turkish government to present the country as similar to European states, the reality of corruption, torture, imprisonment and repression of opposition groups is easily revealed. International human rights groups, trade unions, lawyers associations and Turkish groups have exposed the truth of human rights abuses in Turkey.
Amnesty International's 2001 report on Turkey reveals that:
Human rights defenders continued to face harassment and intimidation; branches of human rights associations were temporarily closed and board members put on trial.
Writers, politicians, religious leaders, human rights defenders and many others were tried and imprisoned for exercising their right to freedom of expression. The number of political prisoners in Turkey is estimated at 10,000+.
Torture remained widespread and the perpetrators were rarely brought to justice. During incommunicado detention in police custody, women and men were routinely stripped naked. Methods of sexual abuse reported included electric shocks and beating on the genitals and women's breasts and rape.
From October 2000, more than 1,000 prisoners participated in a hunger strike against the new isolation prisons. On 19 December 2000 the security forces conducted an operation in 20 prisons in which dozens of prisoners died. Women prisoners were burned to death by blast and gas bombs. Hundreds of prisoners were beaten before, during and after their transfer to three new prisons where they were subjected to solitary confinement and small-group isolation. 47 political prisoners have died in a 14 month long hunger strike against the isolation prisons.
The press is so carefully controlled that even possessing political newspapers can result in years in prison. Journalists who step out of line are also imprisoned or shot. Giving out leaflets or putting up posters will also result in several years in prison.
In addition up to 37,000 Kurdish rebels have died in a 15 year war for autonomy in the south of Turkey. In November police raided 29 offices of Turkey's only legal pro-Kurdish party and arrested 20 people for possession of "illegal publications."
[ENDS]