INTRODUCTION
The Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (HRFT) is a specialized organization founded in 1990 and aims to provide people who have been subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment and punishments, with physical and mental treatment and rehabilitation services and document cases in five treatment and rehabilitation centers, existing today (Adana, Ankara, Diyarbakır, İstanbul and İzmir).
Even the figures and statistical information obtained by the Treatment and Rehabilitation Centres of the HRFT alone, unfortunately, show that despite all the precautions taken by the Constitution and despite subscribed regulations and international conventions, torture and other cruel, inhuman degrading treatments or punishments in Turkey still continue to be a serious problem. It should be noted that the HRFT has contributed greatly to those developments, which are considered to be positive ones.
This report has been written to make a current evaluation of the work of the Treatment and Rehabilitation Centres of the HRFT and also pursues the aim to achieve a better understanding of the problem in question in Turkey.
In the year 2004, the issue of torture has been a special one on the agenda, especially with regard to the accession process to the European Union. Considering the 2004 Regular Report on Turkey’s Progress towards Accession and the resolutions of the 17th December 2004, torture will continue to be a special issue on the agenda in the coming period. It appears that the issue of torture was discussed with political considerations and that far from there being a conscientious outcry, there have been efforts to stress some justificatory reflexes of political attitudes, which do not respect scientific approaches to torture.
Considering this situation, it is extremely urgent that the work of our Foundation, which bases itself on knowledge and, at the same time, on the necessity of a conscientious outcry, must be made more systematical.
This urgency becomes more important when the efforts to justify torture worldwide, especially in Iraq, are considered.
There have doubtlessly been positive legal-administration developments regarding torture in recent times, thanks to the efforts up to date and the relations with the European Union. Despite the positive developments mentioned above, however, the characteristic quality of this whole process is that as yet there is no sincere determination, especially no political determination when it comes to the absolute prevention of torture. When international definitions of systematical torture and the experiences of the past 15 years of (HRFT) are considered, it becomes apparent that there is no holistic approach to the subject and that in the context of the discussion about the question whether torture in Turkey is systematic or not – a question, which was foremost in the public discussions of autumn 2004 – the comments of the Prime-minister show clearly how serious the problem is.
By the beginning of the year 2004, a number of 8835 people had applied to our Treatment and Rehabilitation Centres in five cities (Adana, Ankara, Diyarbakır, İstanbul ve İzmir). With the addition of 922 further applicants, the total number of applicants reached 9757 by the end of 2004. Some hundreds of health workers, in both professional and voluntary capacity, give health services in multidisciplinary teams for the treatment of the physical, psychological, and social problems of the applicants.
The Treatment project not only provides treatment services but also includes work on the improvement of the quality of this service by organizing training, scientific research, and scientific events. A large number of national and international meetings were organized and attended with this aim.
Apart from training sessions on the national level in the year 2004, the participation of our Foundation in the Istanbul Protocol Training Project in five countries (Marocco, Georgia, Mexico, Sri Lanka and Uganda) along with the IRCT, the Turkish Medical Association, and the PHR, has demonstrated the expertise of the HRFT in this area.
In the last period of the year, the practice of “isolating prisoners in F-type prisons, especially in single or three-person cells” stayed in the agenda, which received a “legal” character, when the “Law on Execution of Sentences” came into force. This was especially the case, since the experiences with the Type F prisons and the related hunger strikes were continued, even though the number of the strikers fell considerably. Furthermore, a special issue on our agenda has been the re-incarceration of those prisoners facing health problems due to their hunger strike, who had been set free but were put in prison again on the basis of the reports, submitted by the same Forensic Medicine Institute, that their health was returned to norill.
A special issue on our agenda arose from the fact that a large number of the 3000 prisoners naturally applied to our Treatment Centres. These were set free at the end of the year due to the regulations of the New Turkish Penale Code, which came into force on 1st June 2005 and in the drafting of the topics on “torture” of which the HRFT endeavored to be directly involved. This development has shaped itself into an intensive issue on our agenda, at least in the period at hand.
Work on reports and alternative forensic reports was continued this year as well.
The section 6 of article 67 of the Code of Criminal Procedures, which is due to come into force on 1st June 2005, has been drafted as follows: “The public prosecutor, the participant, his representative, the suspect or accused, the defender or his lawful representative can provide themselves with a scientific standpoint on the issue of the trial, or be used in the drafting of the experts report or about the experts report.” It is probable that the number of applications to the HRFT to obtain such a specialist view will rise on the basis of this article and therefore necessary preparations are being made to make more efficient use of our expertise in this area.
The project “Independent Legal Expertise in Preventing Torture”, which has been initiated by the HRFT in co-operation with the Forensic Medicine Specialists’ Association has contributed greatly to work in this area.
The work of the Foundation has been impaired in the year 2004 by the attempts of the Izmir Bar Association to prevent the work of the Izmir Torture Prevention Group, which contributed greatly to the work mentioned above. The issue of the continuance of the work of the Torture Prevention Group is on the agenda of the Foundation.
As we persisted in stating in the past years,
The issue of “refugeeism” has become a more important issue on our agenda with regard to our work on treatment and rehabilitation because of various reasons like growing inequality in the world and especially the efforts of “so-called developed countries” to limit human mobility and, additionally, to accelerate programs aiming to send refugees back to their home countries.
The new computer program, which had been developing in the previous two years, began to be used in 2004. The program proved itself to be useful in providing the data for the year 2004 in a short time. By making use of the experiences of the year 2004, a more organized work atmosphere will be developed from the year 2005 onwards. The new program will be of extraordinary use since it provides the opportunity to obtain current data and active surveillance.
The work of the HRFT is the work of hundreds of sensitive people, health professionals and human rights advocates, concentrated around a common aim in different cities of the country. We would like to thank all our friends who contributed to our work and to all associated institutions, who supported our work from the very beginning, especially the Human Rights Association and the Turkish Medical Association.