Human Rights Watch (HRW) 2022 World Report on Human Rights Abuses states that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authoritarian and highly centralized government has pushed Turkey’s human rights record back decades by targeting those deemed critical of the government and political opponents, deeply undermining judicial independence and hollowing out democratic institutions.
The report states that there are serious violations of freedom of expression, association and assembly in Turkey, most of the media outlets are owned by companies with close ties to Erdogan and at least 58 journalists and media workers have been imprisoned or convicted for crimes within the scope of the Anti-Terrorism due to their journalistic activities or media connections. There has been heavy pressure on human rights defenders, and the report emphasizes that the detention and trial of human rights defender Osman Kavala for four years reveals how great the pressure is on human rights defenders and other non-governmental organizations that criticize the government.
In January, the Law on the Prevention of Financing the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction entered into force. Although it is claimed that it was enacted to comply with the United Nations Security Council resolutions, this law originally increased the powers of the Ministry of Interior to prevent the legal and legitimate activities of non-governmental organizations.
In the report, it is written that the cases of torture, ill-treatment and enforced disappearance under police surveillance have increased significantly in Turkey. It is emphasized that no progress has been made in the investigations of the prosecutor’s office regarding these allegations and that the security forces who committed these crimes remain unpunished. The report cites as examples two decisions of the Constitutional Court in May 2021 regarding the violation of the ban on ill-treatment. The first of these decisions, with the allegation that a male teacher was subjected to torture and rape under police supervision in Afyon province, the second one is related to a criminal complaint made by a male teacher that he was tortured by the police to such an extent that he had to undergo an emergency surgery in Antalya.
The report also states that there has been no progress in the prosecution investigation launched against Osman Şiban and Servet Turgut, who were detained and taken away by military personnel in the southeast of Turkey in September 2020 and later found injured in the hospital by their families.
The report states that abductions and enforced disappearances continue, and that the longest missing persons are those allegedly linked to the Gulen movement. In this context, following the disappearance of Hüseyin Galip Küçüközyiğit, a former civil servant, in Ankara on 29 December 2020, the authorities informed his family that Küçüközyiğit was in prison on 14 July 2021. It is also mentioned in the report that there is no information about where Küçüközyiğit was held for seven months. The report also highlights that the whereabouts of another former civil servant, Yusuf Bilge Tunç, has not been known since August 2019, when he disappeared.
The report states that the Turkish authorities demand the extradition of alleged Gulen supporters, most of whom are teachers, from different countries around the world, and that some countries complying with the extradition demands are accused of crimes such as abduction, enforced disappearance and illegal transfer of persons, bypassing legal remedies and judicial review. Examples of these events are the illegal smuggling of Orhan Inandi from Kyrgyzstan to Turkey in 2021 and the bringing of Selahaddin Gulen, a registered refugee in Kenya, to Turkey.
The report states that some people in leftist or Kurdish politics were abducted by plain-clothes security guards and were forcibly detained in unofficial places. The report mentions the case of Gökhan Güneş, who applied to the prosecutor’s office on 20 January, alleging that he was kidnapped, interrogated, tortured and released on 26 January in Istanbul.
The report also states that the failure to implement the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, which included the release of Osman Kavala and SelahattinDemirtaş, negatively affected Turkey’s relationship with the Council of Europe.
You can access the Turkey section of the 2022 World Report of Human Rights Watch here:
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2022/country-chapters/turkey
