Şehriban Aslan

 

DİYARBAKIR - Attending the Commission meeting of the European Parliament, IHD Vice Co-Chair lawyer Rahşan Bataray stated that the violations of rights experienced in the Turkey judiciary system constituted the main agenda of the meeting.

 

Commission meeting of the European Parliament on ‘’Status of the judiciary system in Turkey and respect for fundamental rights in laws’’ took place on November 15. After the commission sent an invitation to the Human Rights Association (IHD), IHD Vice Co-Chair lawyer Rahşan Bataray attended the meeting online. Rahşan made evaluations about the meeting she attended.

 

‘The topic title was judicial impartiality’

 

Indicating that the main topic of the meeting was Turkey’s judiciary system, Rahşan said, ‘’The topic was directly related to the impartiality of the judiciary. On behalf of the IHD, I made a wide presentation on the pressure policies carried out by the hands of judiciary, the rights violations resulting from this, the situation of the judiciary, prisons, and the pressure on Kurdish politicians. It was an online meeting, but I can say that it was fruitful’’.

 

‘Policy of impunity has been carried out for many years’

 

Rahşan pointed out that the members of the IHD and its executives are either imprisoned, put on trial or had to go abroad. Rahşan also stated that every action, every statement, and every event are made the subject for trial and they share detailed data and reports about these. ‘’Besides, we created our presentation from three parts. The first was the attempt to silence opposition groups with detentions and arrests, and the second was the violations of rights in prisons. We also talked about the situation of extremely sick prisoners in prisons. Again, drawing attention to the isolation in Imralı Prison, we stated that the Republic of Turkey has acted as contrary to both its own legislation and international legislation. Finally, we stated that the policy of impunity, which has been carried out for many years, has been implemented since the establishment of Turkey,’’ Rahşan said.

 

‘We drew attention to the policies of impunity’

 

‘’When we look at the crimes committed by state officials, especially against Kurds in the 90s and the last period, we showed how impunity was applied without exception through concrete files. We said that the files regarding the unsolved murders and disappearances were left without follow-up, they were dropped due to time-out, and how they gave acquittal decisions in few unsolved murder cases that came before the judiciary as a result of the great struggles of rights defenders after the 2010s. We shared these acquittal decisions. We also expressed that how human rights defender Tahir Elçi, who struggled against impunity, lost his life while waging this struggle, and that how impunity policy was applied in his file,’’ Rahşan said.

 

‘They were of the opinion that more drastic steps should be taken’

 

Emphasizing that they made a call to the commission, Rahşan said, ‘’We stated that the actions and events they will do for these situations should be a more effective. All of the participants have had full knowledge about the judicial system in Turkey and they knew all the violations in very detail. We also regularly share our datas and reports with them. But they had an internal discussion such as, ‘Yes, there are so many violations, but will we stop by just expressing our views and suggestions on this issue every year, or will we call for more drastic and concrete steps regarding Turkey, which is a candidate country to the European Union (EU)?’’ In general, there were discussions of this direction. They were of the opinion that more drastic steps should be taken’’.