Press Release

May 12, 1998

Telephone: (202) 483-6444

Silencing Critics: Top Human Rights Activist Gunned Down in Turkey

Akin Birdal, the President of Turkey based Human Rights Association, was gunned down today. At about noon, he was visited by two armed men who attacked him in his office. He was shot on the chest and his legs. Mr. Birdal was taken to Sevgi Hospital in Ankara and remains in critical condition. The perpetuators were given their usual name, 3actor unknown assailants.2

Over 3.000 people have been murdered in Turkey since the early 1990s by the se so called actor unknown assailants. An overwhelming majority of them are political activists, human rights workers, journalists, in short, Kurdish and Turkish intellectuals, who are urging Turkey to move in the direction of peace and democracy and embrace reconciliation and civil society. For their good counsel, they have been targeted by the bullets of assassins.

Many in Turkey know that the military is behind these death squads. Many in the West continue to accept, at least on the surface, the declarations that emanate from Ankara, 3actor unknown assailants2 have claimed these lives. For the sake of trade and misguided old friendship, no one is raising a voice to urge the Turkish generals to move back from their deadly march into the abyss.

Last month, a Kurdish rebel leader surrendered to the Turkish military. Unseen, his alleged 3confessions2 leaked by the army have included names of a number of prominent individuals, including Akin Birdal, as the paid pipers of PKK. Such a practice has a name in the annals of this country: McCarthyism; in Turkey, it is an ongoing sport, practiced by the faceless generals to silence the humanizing elements in the society.

Last January, Mr. Haluk Gerger, another human rights activist in Turkey held a Press Conference at the Human Rights Association in Ankara to tell the assembled crowd that he was on his way to Ayas Gudul Prison to serve his ten months prison term for an article he had written about PKK. Mr. Akin Birdal, noting that irony of the situation, remarked that elsewhere. writers get in line to see plays or look at the works of art. In Turkey, he said, they go to prison.

Today, these same forces wanted to send Mr. Akin Birdal to the grave. We condemn the vile attack on Mr. Birdal and join his friends and his family in wishing him a quick recovery.