PREFACE
Since its establishment in 1990, one of the main projects of the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey has been the Project for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture Survivors.
By the end of 2000, 5719 people applied to our Treatment and Rehabilitation Centers in five cities (Adana, Ankara, Diyarbakır, İstanbul and İzmir). At the end of 2001, this number reached 6945 with the application of 1226 people. In addition to the staff of the HRFT, hundreds of voluntary health professionals work in multidisciplinary teams for the solution of the physical, psychological, and social problems of the applicants to the centers.
We will remember 2001 as a year in which we faced serious pressure and carried out an intensive work within the frame of the treatment and rehabilitation project and in the entire field of activity of the HRFT.
Some characteristic features of 2001 in terms of our work and field of activity can be summarized as follows:
– The “prison question” that the authorities brought forward with the claims of reorganizing the political life in our country and the subsequent “hunger strikes” in prisons affected our work in many aspects. Treatment and rehabilitation of some of the hunger strikers who applied to our centers marked the work of the year 2001, particularly in İstanbul, Ankara, İzmir and Adana centers.
The ongoing hunger strike in prisons is a social trauma. In this process, the HRFT has been providing qualified medical care for the survivors of the hunger strike, and by so doing it has been contributing to the promotion of a humanitarian approach to the problem and the respect for human life. We would like to thank all of our staff, volunteers and other people who have paid great efforts for overcoming this extraordinary problem and provided an invaluable contribution to the work of the HRFT.
The qualified work of the HRFT has strengthened the atmosphere of solidarity with our works, both in the country and abroad. The atmosphere of solidarity which is created with extraordinary success especially in ‹stanbul shall always be mentioned.
– Our office in Diyarbakır has been facing persecution since September 2001. Inspections, judicial and administrative investigations, pressure and exile practices against this HRFT office and our friends working in Diyarbakır affected not only the work of the HRFT Diyarbakır office but also other HRFT offices and our headquarters. On the other hand, trials and investigations that were brought against our staff members with the aim of rendering the HRFT ineffective in its work continued in 2001.
– As was the case in 2000, a certain group of people applied to the HRFT for having faced pressure or subjected to violence when they attempted to protest certain human rights problems in the society, especially within the frame of the social sensitivity that the “prisons problem” has created. This application profile should not be included in the category of “social events”, but has to be evaluated within the context of “torture” with the real sense of the term.
– Many prisoners were released from prisons in accordance with the December 2000 law of “suspension of sentences.” This was another development that has marked our work in 2001.
– Repatriation of refugees in western countries has intensified in recent years when these countries began to change their refugee policies. Our treatment and rehabilitation centers received many special requests within the context of the repatriation of the refugees.
– The “Prisons Protocol” has been put forward as an international study for the near future, and preparation of this protocol will be an important activity of the HRFT in the upcoming period.
– “The Social Support Project for the children witnessed or exposed to torture” which started at the beginning of 2001 has matured the Treatment and Rehabilitation project. This project is also giving important clues related to the activities of the HRFT in the upcoming period.
– In 2001 İstanbul Office of the HRFT started to carry out its activities on its own premises. An operational physiotherapy unit has successfully been established in this office.
– The Treatment and Rehabilitation Centers Project, besides providing medical and rehabilitation for torture survivors includes training, scientific research and scientific activities for improving the quality of services. Within this framework, there have been numerous meetings held and attended at both national and international levels.
The HRFT, the Turkish Medical Association and the Forensic Specialists Association have carried out a project in 5 cities where the HRFT centers are located (Diyarbakır, Ankara, İzmir, İstanbul and Adana). This pilot project, which involved the application of the “Manual on the Effective Investigation and Documentation of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment” (The Istanbul Protocol), has successfully produced significant clues in terms of the proper application of the IP Program in the near future. Thirty people participated in the training program which was held in 5 cities in this project and has constructed cooperation between the medical and legal professions for effective documentation of torture. This pilot project will definitely be helpful in future projects aiming at a widespread application of the IP.
In 2001 the translation of the IP into the UN official languages was completed, and this document was approved by the UN General Assembly as an official UN Document. The IP is a very important instrument in the prevention of torture at an international level.
Aside from the progress in the above-mentioned areas, the 5 Cities Project, which covers the provinces where we do not have a center as yet despite the intensity of human rights violations, successfully continued in the provinces of Malatya, Gaziantep, Hatay, Adıyaman and Şanlıurfa in 2001.
This report, which includes the results derived from the work carried out by the Treatment and Rehabilitation Centers Project in 2001, is published both in Turkish and in English, as in previous years.
In the 2001 Treatment and Rehabilitation Centers Project, there is an evaluation of 2001 by President Yavuz Önen on behalf of the Executive Board. It is followed by two sections.
The first section includes an outline of the health services provided by the HRFT in 2001 and information and evaluation regarding the applicants to the HRFT Treatment and Rehabilitation Centers in Adana, Ankara, Istanbul, İzmir and Diyarbakır for torture-related problems.
As mentioned above, the treatment of the hunger strikers has been carried out by the HRFT as a specific field of activity. For this reason, the information and evaluation regarding the 329 applicants who went on a hunger strike in 2001 are given under a separate title in the first section.
The second section consists of articles on some of the issues that the Treatment and Rehabilitation Centers of the HRFT worked on in 2001. This section starts with the articles on the hunger strikes in the prisons.
The hunger strike in the prisons started on 20 October 2000 and unfortunately, it has been continuing since then, as a destructive tragedy in world history.
The recent hunger strike in the Turkish prisons is a rare case in the world, and with respect to the outcomes concerning the medical profession and the treatment approaches, it casts a unique example for the medical profession in the whole world. For this reason, conducting scientific studies that aim at reducing the human suffering in similar experiences have become a priority duty of the medical circles in Turkey. The HRFT has been drafting a comprehensive study in this respect.
In this report, we gave place to two articles contributing to these studies. The first article, titled “Role of the Physician during Hunger Strikes and Medical Ethics”, was drafted by myself (Metin Bakkalcı, MD) and delivered as a speech in the 37th National Psychiatry Congress on 2-6 October 2001. This article is an attempt to make a definition of the hunger strikes and discuss the roles of the physicians in hunger strikes as they have to shoulder an important task in such processes as a duty of the medical profession and to clarify the distinction between the hunger strike and suicide.
The second article was written by Dr. Çağrı Temuçin who has carried out extraordinary work regarding the hunger strike. In his study, Dr. Temuçin makes an evaluation of the treatment of the 39 applicants of the HRFT Ankara Treatment and Rehabilitation Center he has personally followed. The study covers the neurological examination, pre-evaluation, and observation of 39 hunger strikers. As can bee seen in this article, determining the proper approach in the treatment of the hunger strikers is extremely important.
The next article by Dr. Deniz Dülgeroğlu, titled “Diagnosis of Applicants Subjected to Physical Trauma”, exposes the importance of the experience that the HRFT has accumulated in the field of treatment and rehabilitation of torture survivors. Dr. Dülgeroğlu determined the clinical characteristics of 41 applicants to the HRFT Ankara Treatment and Rehabilitation Center between the years 1996 and 2000 with complaints related to the musculoskeletal system. The study by Dr. Dülgeroğlu is a contribution to the literature on musculoskeletal system pathologies in victims of torture.
The last article, “Study of an Alternative Forensic Report in a Case of Torture by Electricity”, was written by Dr. Bülent Pişmişoğlu, et al., and presented in the “Annual Forensics Meetings-2001” organized by the Forensics Medicine Institute. This article, which was written on the basis of the scientific studies performed by the HRFT for determining the physical signs of torture and alternative medical reports issued by the HRFT in this sense, is underlying the importance of this subject once again.
The health personnel working in various cities, who have been working wholeheartedly for a common cause, and hundreds of people sensitive to human rights issues have enabled the HRFT to carry on successfully. We would like to thank all our friends who have been with us from the very beginning and have contributed to our work and to the Human Rights Association and the Turkish Medical Association, who have always supported us.