Turkey has been campaigning for years in an effort to join the European Union yet successive Turkish governments have undermined their efforts through the treatment of its largest ethnic minority the Kurd's.
The first hearing of Turkey's biggest trial against members of the press has started, involving 44 journalists. Thirty-six of those have been in pre-trial detention since December, facing terrorism charges and accused of backing the illegal pan-Kurdish umbrella group, the KCK.
The first hearing of Turkey's biggest trial against members of the press has started, involving 44 journalists. Thirty-six of those have been in pre-trial detention since December, facing terrorism charges and accused of backing the illegal pan-Kurdish umbrella group, the KCK.
"This trial is clearly political," said Ertugrul Mavioglu, an investigative journalist, whose terrorism charges for interviewing Murat Karayilan, a member of the KCK – which includes the Kurdistan Workers' party (PKK) – were dropped in December last year.
"The government wants to set an example; it wants to intimidate," he added. "Journalists are being told: 'There are limits on what you are allowed to say.'"
Human rights groups repeatedly criticise the Turkish government for the prosecution of pro-Kurdish politicians and activists and journalists who exercise the right to freedom of expression.
Andrew Gardner, Turkey researcher at Amnesty International, said: "This prosecution forms a pattern [in Turkey] where critical writing, political speeches and participation at peaceful demonstrations are used as evidence of terrorism offences."
In a recent speech, the minister of the interior, Idris Naim Sahin, compared writers and journalists to PKK fighters, saying there was "no difference between the bullets fired in [the Kurdish south-east of Turkey] and the articles written in Ankara".
Meral Danis Bektas, a lawyer, said Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was openly threatening journalists and dictating what they wrote. "This attitude creates a terrible climate for press freedom."
The 75-page report, "Protesting as a Terrorist Offense: The Arbitrary Use of Terrorism Laws to Prosecute and Incarcerate Demonstrators in Turkey," is based on a review of 50 cases. It describes 26 cases of individuals prosecuted for terrorism even though they had nothing to do with violence such as the October 31 attack, but simply for taking part in protests deemed by the government to be sympathetic to the outlawed armed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Hundreds of Kurdish demonstrators are currently in prison pending the outcome of their trials or appeals against convictions. Others are serving long sentences that have been upheld by Turkey's top court of appeal.
"When it comes to the Kurdish question, the courts in Turkey are all too quick to label political opposition as terrorism," said Emma Sinclair-Webb, Turkey researcher at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. "When you close off the space for free speech and association, it has the counterproductive effect of making armed opposition more attractive."
Education
In Turkey, the only language of instruction in the education system is Turkish.[1] The Kurdish population of Turkey has long sought to have Kurdish included as a language of instruction in public schools as well as a subject. Several attempts at opening Kurdish instruction centers were stopped on technical grounds, such as wrong dimensions of doors. An experiment at running Kurdish-language schools was wound up in 2004 because of an apparent lack of interest.[2]
Kurdish is permitted as a subject in universities,[3] but in reality there are only few pioneer courses.[4]
[edit]Multiculturalism, Assimilation
Due to the large number of Turkish Kurds, successive governments have viewed the expression of a Kurdish identity as a potential threat to Turkish unity, a feeling that has been compounded since the armed rebellion initiated by the PKK in 1984. One of the main accusations of cultural assimilation relates to the state's historic suppression of the Kurdish language. Kurdish publications created throughout the 1960s and 1970s were shut down under various legal pretexts.[5] Following the military coup of 1980, the Kurdish language was officially prohibited in government institutions.[6]
US Congressman Bob Filner spoke of a "cultural genocide", stressing that "a way of life known as Kurdish is disappearing at an alarming rate".[7] Mark Levene suggests that the genocidal practices were not limited to cultural genocide, and that the events of the late 19th century continued until 1990.[8]
Certain academics have claimed that successive Turkish governments adopted a sustained genocide program against Kurds, aimed at their assimilation.[9] The genocide hypothesis remains, however, a minority view among historians, and is not endorsed by any nation or major organisation. Desmond Fernandes, a Senior Lecturer at De Montfort University, breaks the policy of the Turkish authorities into the following categories:[10]
- Forced assimilation program, which involved, among other things, a ban of the Kurdish language, and the forced relocation of Kurds to non-Kurdish areas of Turkey.
- The banning of any organizations opposed to category one.
- The violent repression of any Kurdish resistance.
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