1 million 680 thousand were filed as criminals and potential criminals;
650 thousand were detained and all tortured;
388 thousand persons were restricted to go abroad;
210 thousand court cases were opened and 7 thousand death penalties were demanded by prosecutors;
517 death penalties were decided and 50 of these persons were executed;
171 died under torture;
299 persons died in prisons;
it was officially announced that 43 persons committed suicide in the custody;
30 thousand were fired from their jobs for constituting a threat to the regime;
citizenships of 14 thousand were withdrawn;
almost all the laws, including the constitution, were changed and became provisions of restrictions
and prohibitions for the citizens.
The list goes on with such numbers of acts of the last military coup in Turkey, which took place in
1980. This is the list of the oppression which took place in ten years after the coup. Violations
and oppression until this day and during the time of the last 19 years of the war against the Kurds
are not included in this list. To state that more than 30 thousand people have died during the war
should give an idea about the rest.
The junta of course prepared a shield for itself. It is the temporary (still deemed temporary after
25 years) provisional article 15 of the Constitution which says that junta members are untouchable
for their acts during the specific period of time.
You can imagine the individual and social traumas the coup has brought to our lives. People try to
recover and have spent a lot of effort to improve their social lifes; all by themselves. However, we
are still not successful in bringing the members of the junta to court and still deal with the
effects of it.
The problem is not limited with the lack of possibility to legally charge the junta but the impunity
itself. Impunity has been provided to the members of this aparatus of oppression as well as the
torturers.
People face severe types of traumata by the acts of security forces and paramilitaries with approval
or intervention or condone of the state. Disappearances, killings, house raids, torture, detention,
rape, imprisonment, isolation, exile, deportation from the villages, destrution of villages,
... Methods and dose of state oppression may differ, however it affects the public as well as
the individuals. The affects are deep since the state oppression is organized and systematic.
It should be underlined once more that oppression and traumata caused by the state are not limited
with the period of the coup, since the oppressive circumstances continue in different levels and
forms in the time being, which brings us to talk about cumulative trauma as well as current trauma.
There is another point to be mentioned: The intensity of oppression and traumatization has not
followed a rough course, but was rather constant in the last twenty five years. It is slightly
decreasing or increasing in some years, depending on the conjuncture in Turkey and in the world as
well.
All types of acts resulting in and from oppression are violations of human rights, which have been
developed since decades. State oppression is a violation of norms and principles of human rights
law; which has been adopted to protect citizens from unlawful acts of states for the purpose of
protecting human dignity and human integrity. Any act aiming at persons’ physical or mental
health by states or in the name of states not only violates law but also damages public order as
well as the person her/himself. Violations and damages emerge the need for redresses; both
mental/medical and legal. As oppression is related to law, health and the public, law and health
professionals as the elements of this assessment should be intervened in the recovery process. But
how? What is the relation between legal support and recovery/healing process?
Being healthy can be assumed as the continuation of a persons’ bio-psycho-social integrity in
general. Sense of justice has an important place for psycho-social integrity. In every society sense
of justice is one of the basic needs of the individual. However protecting unlawful acts by
establishing impunities damages this sense and obstructs the individual to keep or to reach
healthiness. While health and justice go hand in hand, lawyers, who struggle against impunity and
rise claim of justice, have a crucial function for the protection of the bio-psycho-social integrity
of a person, together with doctors.
Therapeutic environment and treatment are the basics for the public health and peace as well as
obtaining individual health. Persons subjected to torture need to give a meaning to the trauma s/he
had experienced and have a safe environment and feel confidence that s/he is living in a fair world
and that s/he will never be subjected to this experience once again. These are necessary to rebuild
the ties between society and the person.
We, in Turkey, have a quite acceptable legislation against torture. Theoretically, the state
officials are accountable for their acts that violate law. The act of torture is defined as a crime.
However perpetrators are still under the protection of impunity in practice. Main practical problems
could be defined as below:
- Perpetrators are protected by law enforcement officials, including prosecutors, that conduct the
investigation.
- Courts are “tolerant” towards the perpetrators.
- The statute-barred prosecution is one of the other ways leading to impunity.
- Counter accusations in order to intimidate the victims who raise complaints against perpetrators
are also a viable resort of torturers. The accusations are often based on “not obeying
the instructions of security forces” and/or “helping or being a member of illegal
organizations”.
- The reports that are prepared without or insufficient examination by the physicians are accepted
as official reports and thus provide ground for impunity. The courts are used to fulfil the impunity
by accepting these reports as credible evidences and by not asking for additional examination
by experts. Acquittals are often based on “lack of sufficient evidence”.
- Protection of the perpetrators by the state by providing lawyers fees and expenses of the courts
in connection with the cases against the torturers has also to be mentioned since it is an
encouragement for them to continue their acts of crime.
Two components - health and law - of violation that lead to trauma have utmost importance to be
handled as a whole for recovery. Trauma results from holistic processes of destruction, which
require an organized way of struggle.
While therapy and rehabilitation try to achieve a persons’ integrity, the effects of legal
support can provide very important contributions to this process. Support, given to the victims in
response to their claims for justice and achievements during processes, has serious therapeutic
effect not only for the individual but also for the society in which hopelessness is spreading as a
result of impunity.
Public health doctors emphasize three phases of intervention with the aims of prevention and
treatment when they are confronted with health problems. These three phases of intervention can
handily be adopted to a framework of legal support:
Primary intervention:
There’s a sentence which public health professionals are inclined to repeat: “prevention
is better than cure”. This point of view is of course also valid for law professionals.
Prevention in general includes lobbying, making the legal defficiencies clearer, trying to
strenghten the role of lawyers in the investigation and trial processes, supporting bar associations
and/or lawyers associations to be more active on torture cases, giving seminars to law professionals
and sometimes police.
Secondary intervention:
These are indeed the first interventions when the actual problem emerges, which are shielding the
person under arrest against torture. When lawyers are informed about a case, they demand custodial
safeguards that are defined by national and international human rights law to protect the person.
This is of course not enough. They reach or try to reach the person and record the situation. If the
lawyers have any doubt that the person is under risk of torture they inform all the related
officials, national and international human rights organizations, media, parlamentarians, ...
Terciery intervention:
Seeking for justice against the actions that cause trauma; proving torture, identifying
perpetrators, seeking punishment, reparation, redress can be mentioned in terciery intervention.
A group of lawyers has organized a group work, the
Group for Prevention of Torture (GPT)
, in order to intervene the torture cases before, during and after it occures in Izmir. The main
goal of the group is prevention. However, since the goal of prevention has not entirely been
achieved, documentation and investigation are the other objectives for the purpose of struggling
with impunity. It is worth to tell the Group's way of intervention and cooperation with other
professional and human rights groups while results of interventions have given therapeutic effect on
victims, law and health professionals.
GPT has acted on many levels in order to provide primary intervention. Main activities include the
preparation of commentary reports to the drafts and/or amandments for laws; parliamentary petitions
and data concerning torture cases through parliamentarians; provision and dissemination of documents
to be used during the cases, preparation of sample cases to be discussed with lawyers, unexpected
visits to police stations ...
- Lawyers may deal with traumatized persons as their private cases or bring the case to the GPT that
is organized for the purpose to intervene in such situations. This can be done by supporting lawyers
on request or giving full support when the case is adopted as the groups file.
- Torture survivors may receive threats because they applied for court proceedings. In this case the
members of GPT try to protect the person from threats, from repetition of trauma. What the group
could do is to change the place where a person lives, accompany her/him as much as possible, ask the
court to monitor a person's telephone to identify incoming calls, to lodge new written complaints to
the prosecutor.
- Lawyers try to be in a therapeutic approach to the traumatized person. The group believes that
therapeutic communication itself is one of the ways of reparation.
For this purpose, lawyers, who volunteer to work with traumatized persons (tortured persons, women,
children), should receive seminars. These seminars are focused on physical and psychological trauma,
communication skills and interviewing methods in order to avoid retraumatization, besides developing
skills on vocational matters. The number of trained lawyers for this purpose has already reached
four hundred.
- Assigned lawyers from the list of volunteers interview with the person and record the story in
every detail. They also take pictures of physical scars. Very similar to what physicians do.
Lawyers, with the consent of the person, use the story as the main evidence of torture. Then try to
strengthen the statement of the person by other evidences. Pictures, medical reports, testimonies,
registration book and office charts of the police department, pictures of the officers, expert
opinions, identification of officers, identification of vehicles used, ...
- The group make efforts for the person to be examined by a forensic doctor. If this is not possible
or if the given report is false or insufficient lawyers contact the Medical Chamber and Human Rights
Foundation for further examination. A report is prepared by one of the organizations. The Foundation
also assumes treatment responsibility for the victim.
- If the tortured person is put into prison after the detention period, GPT shows the same effort to
send the people to the hospital for a report. Prison authorities generally send the person to the
hospital themselves, however the results have not been satisfactory because of many reasons such as
neglegtance and delay. Physicians and lawyers have created a method in order to overcome this
problem:
Lawyer interview with the person in the prison and ask her/him to indicate the places, shapes,
dimensions of the scars on the anatomic which is brought by the lawyers. Where possible, lawyers ask
the person to picture the physical scars. After collecting these materials the file is given to the
Human Rights Foundation. Physicians of the Foundation give alternative and evaluative medical
reports after examining and comparing all the documents they have.
This method was first used created during the time of the
Manisa Case
in which a group of youngsters were tried as being members of an illegal group. All of them were
tortured by the police during their custody. The children were telling stories of severe treatments.
However there was no official evidence of torture in their official medical reports. Retrospective
reporting was the only solution and the anatomic diagram-method was implemented during this time.
Lots of efforts have been spent for alternative reporting, mainly depending on these diagrams, and
the reports evaluating the invalidity of official forensic reports and the outcome was successful.
The court accepted the reports and the police officers got punished after a long process.
*
It was a victory. It was of course a reparation because the children could at least get the
possibility to continue their lives and their education. One of the children became a lawyer,
another is an actress, another is a journalist and one is an engineer now.
- Retrospective reporting for persons who died under torture is also experienced.
The case of Baki Erdoğan
is the first one some lawyers worked on. He died while he was in detention. The official declaration
concerning the death cause was “illness”. However the family had taken the pictures of
his body before the burial and brought them to the lawyers. Upon the pictures that show scars on the
body lawyers started to work with the physicians, human rights organizations, activists to find out
the truth and report it. It took time, but legal proceedings against police officers could be
given a start and finally they got imprisoned and punished. The whole process, which was carried by
the solidarity of different people, incuding lawyers and doctors was a great encouragement and
empowered the family to stand against what has happened.
This effort and success motivated the lawyers and physicians to prepare guidelines for the
documentation and investigation of torture cases. After working internationally for such kind of guidelines we now have the
Istanbul Protocol - Handbook for Effective Investigation of Torture(IP).
Contributing to the preparation of the IP itself had an amazing effect on the people who struggle
against impunity in terms of therapeutic effect.
- GPT does not only make complaints against the direct perpetrators but also against the ones, who
collaborate, such as physicians who issue false or insufficient reports and therefore do not fulfill
their duty, superiours of the officers or prosecutor for lacking sufficient control or insufficient
investigation, which slows down the process, responsible persons of hospitals or state departments
who withhold important documents and required information.
The lawyers dealing with torture cases try to raise an understanding of the fact that torture is not
an individual act. Whenever possible all the actors of the process (doctors, prosecutors, judges,
lawyers, ...) were reminded that any deficiency on fulfiling their duties and obligations results in
support for torturers and motivates them to continue their acts.
- GPT also gives legal support to the doctors and activists who have been oppressed during the
process. Vice versa, the doctors provide medical support for lawyers and activists.
The 'lawyer approach' seems different from doctors’. In one way that is true; lawyers collect
evidences in order to prove client’s claims. Everything can be assumed as evidences during
legal processes including the client her/himself. Nevertheless if the case is related with trauma,
lawyers need to have common approaches with doctors; recovery - by claim of justice. In this respect
the client is more than a mean of evidence, s/he is traumatized and needs special attention and
approach.
Questions of what, how, where and who are important for both lawyers and physicians. Both groups
need answers to these questions as detailed as possible. What the members of GPT do during the
interviews with torture survivors is just listen and record the statement. A few questions are asked
to receive some more details. Lawyers think that they are not the persons to judge if the statement
of the torture survivor is illocigal/inconsistent or not. The only thing for the first step is to
give the feeling that s/he is not alone, the group and the lawyers support her/him for legal
processes and her/his story is required to claim for justice.
The group believes that access to justice has an important role for completeness of the healing
process. However the lawyers can only act on behalf of the person, not in place of her/him. The
person is probably not sure if s/he wants to give start for proceedings, because of fear or
inconfidence or any other reasons. The person probably needs to be encouraged. Thus, it is the
person who will make the decision for legal proceedings with the assistance of lawyers. This is one
of the ethical obligations of lawyers.
The message of lawyers and physicians is adverse to the torturers message, conveying that the
tortured person is not alone, that they believe in her/him, support her/him, that torturers are not
omnipotent, that solidarity and struggle against torture are possible and that s/he and the
situation are not hopeless, nor helpless. These initiatives can constitute the base and start of a
therapeutic process.
Informed consent is another ethical issue starting from the first instance to the end. Lawyers
inform about the forthcoming processes and receive her/his consent at the beginning. In this case we
only inform the person on what goes on. Sometimes, depending on the specifics of the case the person
is informed at every step and receive her/his consent for every new step.
Confidentiality is another ethical issue which the members of the Group always are very sensitive
about.
Another assistance GPT uses to ask for is receiving consultations and advises of the
treatment/rehabilitation team during the legal proceedings. This contributes to the success of the
files but also to the protection of the victim against retraumatization.
The lawyers, as the supporters of the victim, try to be careful about secondary traumatisation.
Mutual-interdisciplinary support between lawyers and health professionals is used to be established
in order to avoid from secondary traumatization.
Cooperation among health professionals, law professionals and activists can bring achievements in
order to provide this effect and recovery of individual traumata and traumata in the society,
depending on oppression.
The atmosphere created with solidarity of doctors, lawyers, activists and the traumatized person is
one of the crucial aspects. Solidarity is an amazing empowerment for everybody in the process.
Professionals and activists preliminary come together with the aim of supporting traumatized persons
in different ways, however it widens to supporting each other as people taking place in the process
attract attention to the concept of oppression.
We, lawyers and doctors, are healers, but wounded healers. We could also heal ourselves while
seeking justice for the others. It is solidarity which heals all of us.
(Bochum, October 15th 2005)
______________
*
“… The Medical Examination and Report Commission of the Izmir Medical Chamber-undertook
a study to establish the health status of the youths more clearly and to review the scientific and
ethical validity of the “official forensic reports”. For this purpose, through their
attorneys, the youths were asked to give an account as detailed as possible of what she or he had
gone through while in detention and to relate conditions under which the official medical
examinations had been carried out and the attitudes of the physicians. In addition, the body
diagrams were sent to the prison so that the youths could show the areas which are subject to
torture and maltreatment and explain their complaints in detail.
The Report Commission investigated and evaluated the “official forensic reports” in the
light of the documents and information obtained from the youths, and the hospital records of those
who were referred to the hospital during their detainment period.
As a result of these investigations, “individual evaluation reports” were drawn up for
each of the youths, which included the following: a) a brief detention history, b) complaints, c)
the “official forensic reports”, d) a section about those consultations, tests and
analyses that were to be carried out in order to verify the truth of the accounts of torture and
complaints e) an interpretation section covering the consistency of complaints with case histories
and deficiencies of the medical reports on the basis of case histories and complaints.
And a “general evaluation report” that includes ethical and scientific assessment of all
the "official forensic reports" was drawn up, taking into account all of the documents.
In this “general evaluation report”, it is shown that the “official forensic
reports” were prepared without any basic components of the routine examinations,
investigations for the forensic evaluation. None of the standards to clarify the claims of
torture were followed. It is shown in conclusion that these “official forensic reports”
had no validity.
ALTERNATIVE MEDICAL REPORTS
Six of the youths applied to the HRFT also for taking “alternative forensic
reports”.
To make arrangements for the “alternative forensic reports”, the HRFT and the İMC
cooperated to carry out a physical and psychological evaluation of each youth, to do necessary
consultations, including psychiatric consultations and to carry out detailed tests and analyses.
Subsequently, the account of torture as given by each, history of complaints, and the results of
consultations and tests were interpreted and evaluated in detail as a whole. All these details
were put into one report in coherence individual “alternative forensic reports”. As a
conclusion of all these evaluations, for each of the six youths, it was clear that "the youths had
been tortured in detention".
Due to the time elapse, since the detention period till the application to the HRFT (it changed from
2 months to 26 months) the physical evidence of torture were few. But still, on three of the youths,
some physical findings, especially related with musculosceletal system and urogenital system, were
detected and found highly consistent with the infliction of torture.
In psychiatric consultations, it was found that each youth had some psychological symptoms due to
the infliction of torture. "PTSD" was diagnosed in 3 of the youths and 2 others were diagnosed as
"major depression" and 1 youth was diagnosed as "adjustment disorders with anxiety and depression".
The rehabilitation and treatment of all of them were organized by the HRFT.
These “alternative forensic reports”, which proved and documented that the youth had
been tortured, were presented to the court as evidence ...”
Baykal, Kapkın, Ayan, Pişmişoğlu, Lök (1999), “Alternative Medical
Reports and the Responsibilities of the Physicians”, Presentation on 8th Symposium on
Torture-IRCT in India