Vicious crackdown on political prisoners
Turkish regime shows its true colours
During the week of December 19-26, 10,000 Turkish soldiers violently occupied 48 prisons to end two months of hunger strikes and "death fasts" by hundreds of political prisoners.
Operation "Return to Life" left at least 31 prisoners and two soldiers dead. Eight prisoners reportedly "disappeared," and at least 426 were wounded. 1,005 prisoners have been transferred to F-type cells. Veronica Fagan reports.
The hunger strikers were protesting the state's plan to transfer them from large wards to US-style "F-type" cells holding one to three occupants. The armed operation supposedly aimed to "rescue" members of illegal, radical left organisations from "forced" starvation at the hands of their leaders. But the numbers of people on hunger strike has risen since the raids.
The government argues that their decision to replace the ward-based prison system with F-type cells was justified because of the need to end the collective life of left wing political organisations in the prison, which had supposedly become uncontrollable.
F-type prisons, modeled after the US prison system, have little or no shared social space, and would break up the social networks that political prisoners in Turkey have traditionally relied upon to make prison life bearable.
Human rights groups, left-wing parties, the Turkish Medical Association (TTB), the Union of Turkish Bars (TBB) and the Association of Engineers and Architects (TMMOB) have spoken strongly against the harsh design of F-type prisons.
A joint report of the TTB, TBB and TMMOB concluded that F-type prisons are geared to break prisoners psychologically through isolation.
Turkish prisons fail to meet international standards and regularly implement extrajudicial punishment. Since 1980, political prisoners have regularly protested against poor conditions through numerous hunger strikes, death fasts and riots.
Between 1980-95, 460 prisoners died from torture, armed operations, lack of medical care or death fasts. 27 prisoners have died from death fasts since 1980, 12 in 1996 alone.
The government has responded to their demands with armed operations before resulting in 27 more prisoner deaths in the last five years. The security forces' use of excessive force during these operations is well-documented by human rights groups, but no one has been charged with these crimes
Political prisoners themselves warned that if the new prisons were built, prison guard brutality would increase in isolated cells without witnesses. The hunger strike began because despite this extensive opposition, the government' decided to build the new jails anyway, on the pretext of implementing the prison "reform" that all observers agree is urgently needed in Turkey.
The hunger strikers, all members or supporters of radical left organisations, demanded either abolition of F-type prisons or their redesign under the supervision of TTB, TBB and TMMOB. They called for prosecution of perpetrators of previous prison massacres and medical care for ailing prisoners who had survived previous armed operations and death fasts. After a month, the hunger strike became a death fast.
On the strike's 55th day, the Ministry of Justice finally announced postponement of the F-type transfer pending an agreement with the strikers, but would not sign a document mandating the professional organisations' approval of redesigned prisons.
Based on their previous experiences, the prisoners did not trust the Ministry without a written agreement.
Refusing to negotiate further, the government launched 'Operation Return to Life' few days later. The Minister of Interior Affairs admitted that the operation had been planned a year in advance, and right after the operation, hundreds of prisoners - including several conducting death fasts - were transferred to completed F-type prisons.
Lawyers who visited F-type prisons in Sincan and Edirne recently said that death-fasting inmates had been left to die in their cells, some exposed to torture. Prison heating systems did not work, they said, reporting meetings with shivering prisoners wearing sheets.
They estimated the operation's real death toll at well over 40.
Human rights groups suspect security forces using firebombs during the operation. According to the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, some bodies were buried without being identified, and other deceased prisoners' families and lawyers were not admitted to the autopsies.
As many prisoners are in critical condition with burns and other injuries, and others are continuing death fasts, the death toll from Operation Return to Life will likely increase.
The government is now looking for ways to "forcibly treat" the hunger strikers, in clear violation of international medical ethics, which prohibit medical interventions without the patient's consent.
Operation Return to Life reflects Turkey's deeper political crisis, as the country bids for membership in the European Union. The states of the EU are friendly to Turkey, but worry that its appalling human rights record would give them a bad name. Consequently they demand, in public at least, that Turkey clean up its act.
In 1999, the EU officially approved Turkey's candidacy for membership, a piece of news that was enthusiastically received in Turkey. In October 2000, the EU publicised its requirements from Turkey to start the official membership process.
Turkey was supposed to prepare its own national programme, taking the EU demands into account.
Although the requirements of EU membership were well-known from the beginning, and despite the popularity of EU membership as an idea, the mere discussion of concrete steps to fulfill the requirements shifted powerful sectors of the state from a cooperative position to a defensive, paranoid and isolationist position.
The constitution of Turkey, adopted during the military junta of 1980-83, established the "supervisory" role of the military over the political system. One of the requirements of October 2000 was that this should go.
A further condition is native-language media and education for all Turkish citizens, including Kurds.
The conflict and tension in Turkish Kurdistan region has decreased considerably over recent months. The kidnapping of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan and the death sentence passed against him dealt a major blow to the Kurdish national struggle.
Ocalan's decision, after his capture but before his stage- managed trial, to order the organisation to withdraw its armed forces from Turkey borders and change its strategy to legal, political struggle has compounded this set back.
It is clear that the only reason Ocalan's death sentence, currently under review at the European Court of Human Rights, has not been carried out is because of pressure from the EU.
But Turkey's response to what seems a very moderate suggestion for the right to media in their own language for the Kurdish people, demonstrates clearly the depth of hostility of the state to even basic human rights for the Kurds.
The third condition for EU admission, the only one to have received media coverage in Britain, is the commencement of constructive negotiations with Greece and Cyprus over those countries' long-standing disputes with Turkey.
The military, and the ultra-nationalist party MHP in the coalition government, decry the EU requirements as an attack on Turkish national unity, and even an alliance with the PKK.
Most of the other major political parties and the Turkish media express similar views, though less intensely. Previously allied sectors of the state have come into open conflict.
For the first time in history, the military and the National Intelligence Agency publicly disagreed - over the use of the Kurdish language in the media. But since the mainstream political parties lack the political will for an open confrontation with the military and ultra-right, and since superficial changes in Turkey's political system will not be enough to qualify Turkey for EU membership, the EU negotiations are at a standstill.
Operation "Return to Life" therefore has to be understood in this broader political context, as yet a further demonstration of the inability of "modernising" forces in Turkey to make even the small democratic changes required to get into the European club.
Several other recent events point to hardline resistance to democratisation. In Nov-ember 2000, several thousand police held illegal demonstrations to protest at the killings of two officers - and to demand that the government include officers convicted of applying torture in the amnesty bill that came into effect this week, releasing 20,000 non-striking prisoners.
Businessmen called upon the military to intervene in Turkey's "sudden" economic crisis. Shortly thereafter, the government signed an additional agreement with the IMF, bringing all key economic policies in line with its neoliberal demands.
Turkish troops have once again crossed the Iraqi border to pursue PKK forces that have been observing a unilateral ceasefire for over a year.
Operation Return to Life was not confined to prisons: hundreds of civilians demonstrating against the prison invasions were detained daily, and harassment of human rights organisations and legal socialist parties increased.
Turkey has long regarded itself as part of the "civilised" Western world - for example it has loudly trumpeted its secular constitution. But while military rule formally ended in 1983, its political heritage has continued. The continuation of the military constitution is merely the most obvious sign of this.
The concrete demands for EU membership have sharpened the polarisation bet-ween those weak forces who want to move away from this legacy just far enough to reap the economic and political benefits they believe they will get from Turkish membership, and those who believe the tiny price this would cost is far too high.
Operation Return to Life once again demonstrated the strength of the latter.
(Based on information from MERIP Press Information Note 42, "Turkey's Operation Return to Life," by Murat Paker, December 29, 2000.)
For more information on F-type prisons, see the Human Rights Watch report on small isolation prisons in Turkey: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/turkey/
For background on human rights in Turkey, see the Human Rights Watch 2001 report: http://www.hrw.org/wr2k1/europe/turkey.html