Why U.S. Praise
for Turkey is Premature

	In early March [1996], the American Turkish Council held its annual 
conference in Washington D.C. to reaffirm and celebrate the strong and 
mutually supportive relationship shared by the US and Turkey, a key 
American ally in a region of strategic importance.  The three-day conference 
featured House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who delivered the keynote address, 
as well as several other prominent US representatives from Congress, the 
Commerce Department and the Pentagon.  
	Effusive with praise, Gingrich held up Turkey as a model for other 
modernizing nations: "I know that all of us, who cherish and care for the rule 
of law, and a civilized decent future for all citizens in the world, owe a great 
deal to Turkey..."  
	The Speaker neglected to mention Turkey's brutal repression of its 
Kurdish minority and systematic violation of international human rights 
laws -- an omission all too common when US officials seek to nurture close 
bonds with Ankara.
	Since 1984, Turkish armed forces have bombed, burned and 
depopulated more than 2,200 Kurdish villages, part of a campaign to root out 
suspected civilian sympathizers of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), a 
militant Kurdish opposition group.  Throughout 1995, Human Rights Watch 
reports, "free expression was still punished with arrests and imprisonment, 
torture was still employed as a routine instrument of police investigation... 
and there were continued reports of disappearances."
	Over the last several weeks, Ankara exposed in an unusually stark and 
disgraceful manner how it works to silence critics of its abysmal human rights 
policies.  To the consternation of human rights organizations throughout the 
world, Turkey has targeted the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, a 
prestigious organization which documents and administers treatment to 
victims of torture in Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir and Adana.  The Foundation, 
which tracks both Turkish government and PKK violations of human rights, 
is widely cited by places like the US State Department and Human Rights 
Watch because of its reliable information.  It receives international funding 
from the UN Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture, European Union, 
Amnesty International and the Swedish Red Cross.  
	On May 10, Turkish authorities brought a physician and an attorney at 
the Foundation's Adana branch office to trial for refusing to hand over 
confidential information pertaining to their clients --including names, 
addresses, and dates of treatment.  The vast majority of these clients were 
tortured while under the custody of Turkish authorities.  Most went to the 
Foundation only because they trusted their anonymity would be preserved.  
	As Dr. Inge Genefke of the International Rehabilitation Council for 
Torture Victims in Denmark explained during a recent Congressional 
hearing on this issue: "Our principle is to protect our clients...  [W]e work 
under the strictest professional secrecy, which is a universal and basic 
condition for all medical treatment.  Furthermore, in a country like 
Turkey...the state is behind the execution of torture." 	
	Indeed, Turkey's Minister of Justice, Mehmet Agar, was formerly head 
of the National Police, an agency that consistently practices torture.  Both the 
United Nations and the European Council Committee for the Prevention of 
Torture have documented torture performed while Agar was chief of police.  
Today, the US State Department confirms that government-sanctioned abuses 
continue, involving high-pressure cold water hoses, electric shocks, beating of 
the genitalia, hanging by the arms, vaginal and anal rape, use of truncheons 
and sleep deprivation. 	
	Earlier incidents of Foundation harassment signal a blatant attempt by 
the government to undermine the organization's work.  Since 1994, various 
people associated with the Foundation have been prosecuted for issuing 
reports addressing the human rights situation in Turkey.  On May 9, nine 
members of the Foundation and an attorney were brought to trial for 
"insulting the laws of the Turkish Republic" after they printed a critical article 
by a prominent legal scholar.  The nine were acquitted, but prosecution in the 
Adana case continues.  Recently, a spokesman for the Turkish Foreign 
Ministry --the agency that masterminded the most recent wave of 
prosecutions -- proclaimed the Foundation's torture treatment facilities 
illegal:  "I can say that there is no official application of the Foundation for the 
establishment of such centers.  Therefore so-called rehabilitation and 
treatment centers are not legal."  
	Not long before this statement, Turkish police arrested Dr. Seyfettin 
Kizilkan, who heads the Medical Council for Turkey's five Kurdish 
provinces.  Although he was arrested allegedly for "illegal possession of arms 
and grenades," there is widespread speculation that Turkish authorities are 
trying to intimidate medical doctors who witness, treat and care for the 
victims of Turkey's brutal civil war.
 	It is most ironic that Ankara has charged a Foundation doctor and 
attorney with negligence in reporting acts of torture, when in point of fact 
authorities regularly use medical examinations of detainees to cover-up  
evidence of torture.  Dr. Vincent Iacopino of Physicians for Human Rights 
will soon issue a report finding that doctors who perform medical exams 
under the watchful eye of Turkish security forces rarely record evidence of 
torture for fear of reprisal.  Dr. Iacopino explains, "It's a way that the State can 
use doctors both to destroy the evidence, and also to sanction the 
government's practice of torture."
	While American politicians sing Turkey's praises, Ankara's military 
crackdown on the PKK intensifies.  High levels of US military assistance ($5.3 
billion over the last decade) and weaponry (amounting to 80% of Turkey's 
arms imports) enable this devastating war to continue.  Last year, the State 
Department acknowledged that Turkey uses US weaponry --including 
Lockheed Martin F-16 fighters, and Sikorsky Black Hawk and Textron Bell 
helicopters-- to commit human rights abuses and decimate Kurdish villages.  
	It is no accident that the American Turkish Council conference in 
Washington was sponsored largely by US weapons manufacturers, including 
the three cited above.  Stopping military assistance would send a strong signal 
to Turkey that the US no longer supports a military solution to the Kurdish 
conflict.  Until Turkey allows its Kurdish minority and the rest of its citizens 
and civic organizations to enjoy full human rights and freedom of speech, 
praise for Ankara is dangerously premature.


--Jennifer Washburn is a research associate at the World Policy Institute at the 
New School in New York City, and a freelance journalist.