Author Archives: Howard Eissenstat

About Howard Eissenstat

Howard Eissenstat is an Associate Professor of History at St. Lawrence University, in Canton, NY. Since 2006, he has served as a Country Specialist on Turkey for Amnesty International USA. He earned his doctorate in Modern Middle Eastern History from UCLA in 2007. In addition to his scholarly work, Dr. Eissenstat writes frequently on contemporary Turkish politics, foreign policy, and human rights issues. Follow him on twitter @heissenstat
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In Turkey, Who Will Be Left to Defend the Victims?

January 18, 2013 at 12:04 PM
Police raids in several Turkish cities have resulted in the arrest of 15 human rights lawyers, including from the the Contemporary Lawyers’ Association.© ADEM ALTAN/AFP/Getty Images

Police raids in several Turkish cities have resulted in the arrest of 15 human rights lawyers, including from the the Contemporary Lawyers’ Association.© ADEM ALTAN/AFP/Getty Images

It is hard to ignore the increasingly grave human rights situation in Turkey, where, as part of a broader crackdown on leftists, Turkish police raided residences and offices last night, arresting scores of individuals.

Amnesty notes that, among those detained, were fifteen “human rights lawyers known for defending individuals’ right to freedom of speech and victims of police violence.” Some of those arrested had previously voiced to Amnesty their fear of arrest due to their work defending those standing trial under Turkish anti-terrorism laws.

Andrew Gardner, Amnesty International’s researcher on Turkey, notes:

“The detention of prominent human rights lawyers and the apparent illegal search of their offices add to a pattern of prosecutions apparently cracking down on dissenting voices. Human rights lawyers have been just some of the victims in the widespread abuse of anti-terrorism laws in Turkey. The question to ask is: who will be left to defend the victims of alleged human rights violations?”

Who Murdered Sakine Cansız?

January 11, 2013 at 2:57 PM
A woman of Kurdish origin holds a sign reading "Sakine Cansiz, Fidan Dogan, Leyla Soylemez - 3 women militants of the Kurdish cause" during a demonstration and commemoration in honor of the three Kurdish women activists killed yesterday in Paris, on January 10, 2013.

A woman of Kurdish origin holds a sign reading “Sakine Cansiz, Fidan Dogan, Leyla Soylemez – 3 women militants of the Kurdish cause” during a demonstration and commemoration in honor of the three Kurdish women activists killed in Paris on January 10, 2013. (FREDERICK FLORIN/AFP/Getty Images)

On the night of January 9, three women were murdered in the offices of the Kurdistan Information Office in Paris.   According to press accounts, the three were killed execution style, each shot with a bullet to the head.

All of the three women, Sakine Cansız, Fidan Doğan and Leyla Söylemez, were activists, with ties to the Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK, and Cansız, the eldest of the group, is one of the founders and leading figures within that organization.

While there is considerable debate as to who killed these women, there is little question that these murders were political in nature.   Most analysts believe that the killings are aimed at scuttling nascent talks between the Turkish government and the PKK aimed at ending a conflict which has cost as many as 40,000 lives and led to countless human rights abuses since it began in 1984.

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The Uludere Bombing: When Will Their Families Get Justice?

December 27, 2012 at 12:10 PM
Kurdish people hold pictures of victims killed in a Turkish air raid during a demonstration on May 26, 2012, in Istanbul. (Photo credit BULENT KILIC/AFP/GettyImages)

Kurdish people hold pictures of victims killed in a Turkish air raid during a demonstration on May 26, 2012, in Istanbul. (Photo credit BULENT KILIC/AFP/GettyImages)

On December 28, 2011, the Turkish military killed thirty-four of its own citizens, all civilians, most of them children in the Uludere/Qileban district, in Eastern Turkey.  The youngest was twelve.  A year has now passed and the families of these innocent people still wait for justice.

The Turkish government has offered compensation to the families of those killed.  The families, however, have refused to accept it until the truth behind the attack is uncovered and justice is done.

The families are still waiting.  On the anniversary of the Uludere bombings, Amnesty once again calls on the Turkish government to fully investigate these events and to bring those responsible to justice.

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Five Reasons That the LGBT Community in Turkey Needs Heroes Like Ali Erol… and How You can Help!

December 6, 2012 at 3:23 PM

Turkish homosexuals and human rights activists chant slogans as they hold a giant rainbow flag during the Gay Pride Parade march on Istiklal Avenue in Istanbul, on June 27, 2010. Photo credit MUSTAFA OZER/AFP/Getty Images

Subject to state harassment and widespread discrimination, the Turkish Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community faces dangers on all sides.

Amnesty has long campaigned on LGBT issues in Turkey.  However, we can’t forget the heroic work of Turkish activists, who have – despite grave personal risk – worked to protect the human rights of LGBT individuals in Turkey.  Last month, one of these activists, Ali Erol, received the 2013 David Kato Vision & Voice Award in recognition of his work with KAOS-GL, one of the first and most important examples of an increasingly outspoken LGBT activism in Turkey.

Ali Erol’s work is important, because, as Amnesty has reported, the LGBT community in Turkey faces powerful threats:

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In Turkey: The Ivory Tower Besieged

November 14, 2012 at 12:43 PM

Turkish students stage a protest against the government and condemning the detentions of students at the universities in Ankara on June 16, 2012. (ADEM ALTAN/AFP/GettyImages)

In Turkey, it is not “publish or perish” that scholars must fear.  It is prison.

There was a time, not very long ago, that Turkey seemed on the edge of a new era of academic and intellectual freedom.  New private universities created institutional support for more independent scholarship, while the Turkish government showed at least grudging willingness to allow debate of formerly “taboo subjects.”  For example, in 2005, the ruling AK (Justice and Development Party) Party, after initial hesitation, publicly supported the first conference in Turkey that seriously examined the Armenian Genocide.  It soon became apparent, however, that the AK Party’s vision of academic freedom has clear limits.

Asserting Control over the Universities

In some cases, basic science came under attack.  In Turkey, as in the United States, there is a powerful creationist movement eager to debunk fundamental aspects of evolutionary science.  Creationism has deep roots in Turkey and the ruling AK Party has quietly picked up the banner of anti-science.  Slowly, over the past several years, major scholarly institutions have lost their independence and party hacks have replaced serious researchers.

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Hunger Strikes in Turkey: A Quiet Crisis

November 5, 2012 at 11:42 AM

With relatively little attention from the international press, a quiet crisis is developing in Turkey, where hundreds of prisoners are engaged in mass hunger strikes.   The strikes originated in mid-September, with initial demands centering on Kurdish language education and the on-going refusal of Turkish authorities to allow PKK leader, Abdullah Öcalan, to meet with his lawyers.  Additional hunger strikes have sprung up in scores of prisons throughout the country, with demands diversifying as the strikes have spread and at least seven hundred men and women now participating.   Because the hunger strikers are allowing themselves water fortified with salt, sugar and vitamins to prolong the strike, these protests are likely to be long, slow, and painful.  The first strikers have already gone without food for nearly two months and doctors have indicated that some hunger strikers are nearing death.  Outside the prisons, violent clashes between protestors and law enforcement officials continue.

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Turkish Human Rights and the Syrian Conflict

October 19, 2012 at 12:07 PM

Recent tensions along the Turkish – Syrian border have captured the world’s attention and sparked tough talk in Ankara.  Turkey’s parliament has approved cross-border operations and the Turkish military has increased its presence on the border.  Artillery fire across the border is a daily event and, after Turkey stopped and searched two flights bound for Syria, each country has banned the other from using its airspace.  Yet, there is no war fever on Turkish streets.  Part of the reason for this lays in longstanding Turkish traditions; an important strand of Republican popular memory highlights the “foreign entanglements” of the Ottoman Empire as a mistake not to be repeated.  Just as important, however, are the ways in which the Syrian crisis is understood within the context of Turkish domestic politics and the on-going repression of activists and dissidents within the country.

Although Turkey has been touted as “a democratic model for the Middle East,” the reality is far more complicated.   This, after all, is a country where expressing unpopular views can land you in jail.  World renowned pianist, Fazıl Say, for example, is on trial for tweets deemed “insulting to religious values.”  Poking fun at politicians can also land you in big trouble.  Recently, a man was sentenced to more than a year in prison for making fun of the Turkish president, Abdullah Gül.  Needless to say, there is no Turkish equivalent of the Daily Show.  The Turkish record on press freedoms continues to be “bleak” according to a recent review by Marc Pierini for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, with many journalists in prison or on trial and a growing culture of self-censorship.

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Torture and Impunity in Turkey: The Case of Engin Çeber

September 13, 2012 at 12:05 PM
Engin ceber

Engin Çeber

Almost four years ago, in October 2008, activists Engin Çeber,  Cihan Gün, and Aysu Baykal were arrested by Turkish officials during a protest condemning the shooting the previous year of another member of the Turkish Human Rights Association.  Once in prison, they were soaked with icy water and beaten with iron rods and wooden truncheons.  Witnesses recall that Baykal was beaten so brutally that she lay unconscious on the floor after the guards were done with her.  Twenty-nine year old Engin Çeber was even more severely injured.  He was transferred to a hospital, but Çeber died of a brain hemorrhage three days later.

In a 2010 landmark court decision, sixteen state officials associated with Çeber’s death were convicted for their participation in his torture and murder.  However, these convictions were overturned on appeal and the case was returned to the local court for retrial.  This second trial is scheduled to end in a verdict at the beginning of next month.

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The Ghosts of Sivas: Justice Denied in Turkey

March 12, 2012 at 3:42 PM

In Turkey, echoes of past crimes continue to call out for justice.  Under Turkey’s infamous Article 301 statute (in which it is a crime to “denigrate Turkishness”), Temel Demirer is still on trial for speaking publicly about the Armenian Genocide.  Almost monthly, new mass graves are found from the thousands killed by security forces during the 1980s and 90s.   As we have previously reported, investigations of these graves are slipshod and the perpetrators not held to account.

Emblematic of this grim pattern is the sad legacy of a massacre in Central Anatolian town of Sivas in 1993 (A Turkish documentary on the massacre, with English subtitles, can be found here).  The events of that day are shocking still.

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Prison (again) for a Man of Peace in Turkey

February 29, 2012 at 11:47 AM

Halil Savda (Photo Vedat Yıldız )

Halil Savda is in prison again.  On February 24, he was arrested in the town of Doğubeyazit, in Eastern Turkey, and sentenced to serve a hundred-day prison sentence.  His crime was to merely speak publicly in support of conscientious objectors.  This, according to Turkish law, constitutes “alienating the public from military service” and is a crime under Article 318 of the Turkish Penal Code.

This is not the first time that Halil has been imprisoned for his beliefs (a video on him, produced by Amnesty last year, is available here).   Over a five year period, he was imprisoned, often under harsh conditions, for a total of seventeen months for refusing to serve in the military (Turkey, along with Azerbaijan, is one of only two countries within the Council of Europe that does not respect the rights of conscientious objectors).

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