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 Prime Ministry Human Rights Council (HRC) former Chair Associate Professor Vahit Bicak said the new Counter-Terrorism Act (CTA) will land Turkey in difficulty.
(Today's Zaman, 26.04.2006) Prime Ministry Human Rights Council (HRC) former Chair Associate Professor Vahit Bicak said the new Counter-Terrorism Act (CTA) will land Turkey in difficulty.
Bicak said the arrangement he termed, "authoritarian," will increase cases filed at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). "Stepping back from freedoms will tarnish Turkey"™s record that has improved over recent times."
Authorities maintain the articles on security forces"™ authorization in the use of weapons and the replacement of "judiciary controllable" verdicts with imprisonment for public servants will cause headaches for Turkey, who since the introduction of greater restrictions on freedoms that was included in the 1991 CTA, has paid a 54 million new Turkish liras in compensation to the ECHR. Thanks to the EU adaptation laws, the number of cases filed against Turkey at the ECHR has fallen.
The CTA adopted in 1991 resulted in the filing of hundreds of cases for violations of the right to live, for torture, the duration of custodial sentences and violations of freedom of expression in the Strasbourg Court against Turkey. Most of the laws leading to such action have been changed as part of legal reforms conducted in relation to the European Union accession process.
It is feared that the controversial articles in the new draft will cause a flood of new cases against Turkey in the ECHR.
The majority of violations in cases filed against Turkey originated from the CTA passed in 1991 and article 312 of the former Turkish Penal Code.
The ECHR, in the applications filed mostly from the southeastern region of Turkey, sentenced Turkey to pay millions of euros in compensation after being found guilty of violating the right to live, for torture, and for deaths in custody, and for conducting insufficient investigations into the security forces.
It is anticipated that the ECHR will reject many articles contained in the new draft. In particular, the article relating to the security forces"™ authority to kill, rearranged in the draft, is one such article.
In the1991 version of the CTA, security forces were granted with the authorization to use their weapons without hesitation against suspected terrorist organization members who do not obey the command, "Hands up!" This article was annulled in 1996 on the grounds that it violates the Constitutional principle relating to the right to live.
With the amendment to the article, the new CTA returns the authorization to security forces to use their own discretion on the use of weapons and level of force to deactivate a dangerous situation.
This new article, it is feared, will lead to an increase in applications to ECHR over the right to live. Turkey has been ruled against in more than 80 cases filed at the ECHR, initiated mostly from the country"™s southeastern region.
The violation of the right to live protected by Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights is considered to be the heaviest violation of rights and freedoms.
The article suggesting "judicial control" for public officials instead of imprisonment in the fight against terror is one of the issues that will prove troublesome for the ECHR. The CTA adopted in 1991 foresaw the judgment of security officials for crimes they committed without arrestment in the lawsuits filed against them. This article, annulled one year after it was adopted, is being revived. According to the resolution draft, security officials will be given a penalty of "judicial control" instead of arrest. Any public official found guilty will only be subject to occasional visits to the police office to sign a document. The ECHR had ruled Turkey must pay millions of Euro in indemnity on the grounds that Turkey conducted insufficient investigations in lawsuits filed against dozens of public officials and violated their right to a fair trial. Articles that will restrict the freedoms of expression and press such as "provoking crimes by admiring the crime and the criminal," seem to be hindered by the ECHR.
Turkey, the third country after Russia and Poland with the most number of lawsuits in the ECHR, eliminated the lawsuits against it. The court, which concludes lawsuits in an average of eight to nine years, is now finalizing lawsuits remaining from the 1990s when fight against terror was at its peak. The ECHR concluded 289 lawsuits about Turkey in 2005. There was a remarkable decline in the number of applications to the ECHR from Turkey in 2005. While 3,930 lawsuits were filed against Turkey in the ECHR in 2004, this figure receded to 2,244 in 2005. A total of 241 of those lawsuits were accepted by the court.
Our image will be spoiled again
Former president of the prime ministry"™s Human Rights Committee and a lecturer at the police academy, Associate Professor Vahit Bicak said the CTA is an authoritarian draft that would place Turkey in a difficult situation in the ECHR. Bicak believes that the draft will increase the number of guilty verdicts for Turkey by the ECHR. "Taking a step backwards about freedoms will spoil Turkey's image in the ECHR, which has recently recovered," said Bicak. Indicating that the CTA is not a draft that Turkey needs, Bicak explained: "What Turkey needs is expansion of the scope of freedoms. They try to create an environment as if many freedoms exist and they are being abused. When compared with Western democracy, Turkey has an authoritarian structure. The scope of individual freedoms is narrow." He emphasized that political parties forget their promises for more freedom when they come into power, claiming that "the government put aside the discourse on freedom and seemingly turned into an authoritarian structure."
26.04.2006
Emre Demir, Metin Arslan Ankara |
