Information on treatment of Kurds in Turkey; consequences of their return to Turkey [TUR0982]
Please find attached copies of the following reports which provide
information on treatment of Kurds in Turkey:
-Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1987,
(Washington: U.S. Department of State, 1988), pp. 1042-1043.
-Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1988,
(Washington: U.S. Department of State, 1989), pp. 1208-1209.
-Critique (Review of the Department of State's Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1987), (Washington: Human
Rights Watch/Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, June 1988), pp.
154-158.
Briefly summarized, the documents state that Turkey has a
stringent policy of forcibly integrating the country's minority
population through suppression of their ethnic identities. Kurds,
as other minorities, can and have been integrated into Turkish
society, and some have even achieved influential positions in
government, but only at the expense of their cultural identity. [
Country Reports for 1988, p. 1209.] The pressure on Kurds,
according to the attached reports, went to the extreme of
forbidding the use of Kurdish language in conversations between
prisoners and their visiting relatives or lawyers, and the banning
of recordings and singing of Kurdish songs in public. [ Country
Reports for 1988, p. 1198.] According to the latest Country
Reports (1989), the former prohibition has been lifted and, for
the first time, the government allowed the sale of a recording of
Kurdish songs in 1988. [ Ibid.] However, the same report
indicates that publishing materials in Kurdish or writing about
Kurdish history can result in imprisonment. [ Ibid.]
It must be noted also that the situation of Kurds may vary
depending on their area of habitation. At present, the Turkish
government is engaged in a prolonged confrontation with an armed
Kurdish separatist movement operating mainly in the southeastern
region of the country. Human Rights Watch indicates that military
abuses and torture on family members of suspected rebels have been
reported, as well as the forced relocation of entire villages and
the occasional killing of ordinary peasants in the region. [
Critique (Review of the Department of State's Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1987), (Washington: Human
Rights Watch/Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, June 1988), p.
156.]
Since the military coup of 1980, the government has refused to
renew the passports of thousands of Turks living abroad.
[Critique, p. 158; Country Reports for 1988, p.
1201.] Some of those who attempted to return without valid
passports were refused entry, while others were arrested and a few
were temporarily imprisoned. [ Country Reports for 1988, p.
1201.]