09.03.1995

The cost of terror

“THE economic cost of a PKK terrorist is nearly £75,000”.

This edifying sentence comes from the Human Rights minister of Turkey - a tough job by anyone’s standards - speaking at a recent press conference in Ankara.

He stated: “If someone is taken to the police station, they must then either be taken to court or released. In fact, sometimes this doesn’t happen. Sometimes they are killed.”

He admitted that this alienated many people but, pointing to the “reality of Turkey”, gave some official statistics concerning the abuse of human rights that followed the 1980 military coup.

• The military junta denied passports to 88,000 people because of their political affiliations
• 650,000 people were arrested.
• 550 were sentenced to death and many are still waiting the results of their final appeal to Turkey’s parliament.
• 55 people were actually executed.
• 30,000 escaped abroad and have become political refugees.
• 937 films were banned.
• The Kurdish language was banned.
• In the ten year period between August 1984 and August 1994, 13,000 people have been killed in clashes with the police and army - mostly as a result of the armed struggle waged by the Kurdish national movement, the PKK.
• 2,689 prisoners are officially recognised as having been tortured while in custody.

Of course, we should not trust the statistics of the government - they are certainly underestimates in all categories cited. However, the fact that the Turkish state authorities themselves are now recognising the scale of the oppression that came down on the heads of the progressive movement and the working class after 1980 indicates just how ferocious the reaction actually was.

Kemal Osman