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TURKEY: NGOs Unite to Demand Say in Human Rights Bill

Daan Bauwens

ANKARA, Nov 26 2009 (IPS) - Turkey’s new human rights bill has a flaw – not a single rights group was consulted in the drafting.

With protests building up against this lapse, 41 non-government organisations (NGOs), representing various ethnic, religious, sexual and other minorities, have formed the Anti-Discriminatory Coalition and served the government a Nov. 26 deadline to make rectification.

The coalition has warned, in a statement, that it is prepared to take all necessary steps to expose the ‘illegitimate’ character of the new measures and move to create a fully legal anti-discrimination centre on behalf of citizens.

On Nov. 13, when the bill was tabled, it featured plans for an independent anti-discrimination commission, a national human rights centre and ratification of the U.N. Convention Against Torture. There was also provision for an independent body to investigate charges of torture or mistreatment by security forces.

Cengiz Güleç, chairman of the Alevi Institute in Ankara, pronounced the government’s initiative welcome, but the process ‘’disquieting’’.

‘’The Paris Principles and international rulings show that a human rights bill can only be developed from the grassroots level, with the participation of civil society and professionals on the field,’’ Güleç said at a meeting of the new coalition earlier this week.

The Paris Principles were adopted by United Nations Human Rights Commission Resolution 1992/54 of 1992 and relate to the status and functioning of national institutions for protection and promotion of human rights.

Berin Alaca, president of an association for solidarity with the freedom-deprived juvenile called Özgeder, told IPS: ‘’It is impossible to speak of independence if you do not even allow the law itself to be controlled by independent organisations, let alone involve us in its making. Any human rights institution can only be independent if the stakeholders themselves have a say in it.’’

The new human rights bill was drafted because existing governmental human rights institutions proved to be inefficient and lacked independence as they were controlled by the ministry of internal affairs.

Furthermore, the new measures are part of the ‘democratic initiative’ framework that was launched earlier this month by the ruling Justice and Development Party.

This ‘democratic initiative’ wants to better the human rights conditions in the country radically, solve the 25-year-old armed conflict with the country’s Kurds and put an end to the discrimination of the Alevis, a religious-humanistic mystical branch of Islam that is practiced by 20 percent of all Turkish citizens.

The initiative has already stimulated discussions in the country, especially by Kurdish and Alevi minorities who have suffered decades of harsh and bloody suppression by the country’s nationalist governments and the military.

While the initiative is internationally supported, many Turks doubt its sincerity. And the new coalition suggests that the initiative, of which the bill is a part, is nothing but pretence at reform.

‘’It seems like a superficial change, not a deep change from within,’’ Emrah Kirimsoy from the NGO, Agenda for Children (Gündençocuk), told IPS. ‘’For the moment, the only steps that have been taken look like a patchwork, they are small, insufficient changes that have but one aim – to please the European Union.’’

Aykan Erdemir, member of the scientific board of Alevi Institute, agrees. ‘’The government’s main concern is not the minorities, but the European Union,’’ he told IPS.

‘’They want positive accession reports, so they put up a show and pretend to implement changes while it is not the case,’’ Erdemir said. ‘’Turkish politicians are learning to be politically correct, which has a positive effect on the public opinion that, for the first time, is thinking about minorities in a positive way. But it is possible that in spite of the political correctness, the policies will stay the same.’’

The response to the government’s ‘democratic initiative’ l has, over a period of six months, brought together major human rights organisations as well as smaller groups fighting for the rights and protection of women, children, the disabled, Armenians, Kurds, gays, lesbians, transvestites, Syrian Christians, Roma, the Protestant church and Caucasian minorities.

This process of coalition building was backed by the Alevi Institute and financed by the European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights.

Eerdemir call it a landmark. ‘’It is for the first time that these people are sitting together. This is the largest coalition against discrimination that has ever existed in Turkey. Gays, Kurds or Armenians would never be heard on their own.’’