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This News Service is posted by the International Secretariat of Amnesty
International, 1 Easton Street, London WC1X 8DJ (Tel +44-71-413-5500,
Fax +44-71-956-1157)
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TURKEY: AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL CALLS FOR HALT TO HELICOPTER
TRANSFERS


Amnesty International is today calling for an immediate end
to all sales or transfers of military helicopters to the
Turkish Government, in the light of mounting evidence that
such helicopters are used to commit human rights violations.
      The human rights organization is alarmed about reports
of Turkish troops and gendarmes (soldiers carrying out police
duties) being ferried to remote areas in helicopters where
they torture and kill civilians, or where helicopters are
used in attacks on villages which refuse to join the system
of village guards, a militia armed and paid by the government
to fight the PKK.

      France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the United States
have, in the 1990s, sold military transport, surveillance and
attack helicopters to Turkey. Helicopters are used in
operations against the armed illegal Kurdish Workers~ Party
(PKK) but also in operations against civilians in which grave
human rights violations have been committed.

      Currently, companies in France, Russia and the USA are
bidding to supply further quantities of military helicopters
to Turkey. Amnesty International believes that before any
further military helicopters are transferred, the Turkish
military authorities should demonstrate to impartial
observers that they are not being used for human rights
violations and that proper safeguards are established to
prevent any recurrence (see below for cases in which
helicopters were used for human rights violations).

      The supplier countries must observe their international
obligations, in particular the OSCE Principles Governing
Conventional Arms Transfers which state that ~each
participating State will avoid transfers which would be
likely to be used for the violation or suppression of human
rights and fundamental freedoms~. All countries supplying
helicopters to Turkey are OSCE member states.

      ~Governments of supplier countries are co-responsible
for the use of the arms that they are producing and selling.
Financial benefits on one side of the chain do not justify
contributing to unjustifiable and illegal killings on the
other. These governments must ensure reliable monitoring of
the end-use of their weapons,~ Amnesty International said.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON THE USE OF HELICOPTER FOR HUMAN
RIGHTS VIOLATIONS

      On 12 October 1995 the newspaper Evrensel (Universal)
reported that Ali Ihsan DaglI, captured by gendarmes at
KurucayIr village in DiyarbakIr province, ~disappeared~ after
being taken away for interrogation in a helicopter on or
about 19 April 1995. On 11 May Amnesty International wrote to the Turkish Interior Minister about the
~disappearance~, urging an investigation into the whereabouts
of Ali Ihsan DaglI, but by January 1996 had received no
reply.

      On 9 October 1994, it was reported by villagers that
Turkish security forces burned down 17 villages in the
mountainous eastern province of Tunceli during a three-week
offensive against armed PKK members. The Reuter news agency
reported that US-made Sikorsky and Super Cobra helicopters
flew over the city of Tunceli all morning, ferrying in troops
and launching rocket attacks. During these operations Ali
Karaca, a miller from the Kom district of the village of
Ibnimahmut was, according to his family, detained by soldiers
and flown by helicopter first to the local gendarmerie post,
and then to Tunceli for interrogation. His family found him
in a coma in hospital where he died several days later as a
result of head injuries apparently resulting from beating.

      On 6 May 1994 a large contingent of soldiers burned the
village of  Deveboyu, near Kulp in Diyarbakir province. A
villager reported: "While the village was burned, four
helicopters were circling above. Afterwards the soldiers
warned us that we should quit the village within three days,
and then they set off for Kulp. After the soldiers had gone
we tried to get what remained of our partially burned
furniture out of the smoking ruins, but very little was
left." The villagers obtained permission to stay in the ruins
of their village and in tents until they could harvest their
crops. Two weeks later three male villagers ~disappeared~
after being taken into custody at the ruined village by four
soldiers.

      On 24-26 March 1994 helicopters and jet aircraft bombed
several villages in SIrnak province killing 36 civilians, at
least 17 of whom were children. Official statements claimed
that the bombing was accidental, but local inhabitants said
that they had been subjected to death threats from security
forces days before the bombing for refusing to join the
village guards. In June 1995 the US Government reported that
the Turkish Government had denied the bombings, but US
personnel confirmed that ~the raids did take place and that
some civilians were killed.~

      On 20 October 1993, 11 villagers ~disappeared~ after
being taken into custody by soldiers in the village of Alaca,
near Kulp in DiyarbakIr. An eye-witness told Amnesty
International: "They were loaded into two helicopters and
taken away. Virtually the whole village saw the men being
loaded into the helicopters. The village is now empty. It was
burned down."

      Other similar cases have been researched and reported
by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other human
rights organizations, but information about end-use of
military equipment in the conflict zone is increasingly hard
to obtain. While Amnesty International researchers have been
deported and banned from Turkey, journalists in southeast
Turkey have in the past been victims of extrajudicial
executions and ~disappearance~, and human rights monitors are
frequently detained, tortured and threatened.
      Helicopters have also been used in the course of human
rights violations in western Turkey. On 13 and 15 March 1995,
22 protestors were shot dead and others were seriously
injured by armed police shooting directly into crowds during
violent disturbances in Istanbul. An Istanbul municipality
worker who witnessed the subsequent protests and the police
shootings said: "There were helicopters up above, tanks in
front, and the police behind. The helicopters gave directions
from above, the tanks moved forward and the police opened
fire."






NOTES ON TURKEY~S HUMAN RIGHTS RECORD

      Turkey has a serious and apparently worsening human
rights record. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary and Enforced
Disappearances received more reports of ~disappearance~ from
Turkey than from any other Member State in 1994. There were
over 40 more ~disappearances~ in 1995, and 17 reported deaths
in custody as a result of torture. The omens for 1996 are not
promising: in the first 10 days of the year there were six
deaths in custody: four prisoners were beaten to death in an
Istanbul prison, a journalist was beaten to death after being
detained by police from the funeral of two of those
prisoners, and a 14-year-old boy was shot dead in police
custody in Mersin.

      In the southeast provinces a bitter conflict between
government forces and armed members of the PKK has claimed at
least 18,000 lives, including civilians, since hostilities
began in 1984. Because villages which refuse to participate
in the village guard system are suspected by the authorities
of assisting the PKK, they are frequently the subject of
raids, often with helicopter support, in which villagers
become the victims of torture, death in custody,
~disappearance~ and extrajudicial execution. Villages which
put up village guards, on the other hand, are subject to
raids by the PKK who also commit human rights abuses. They
also have killed hundreds of Kurdish villagers, including
prisoners, women and children. Hundreds of thousands of
Kurdish villagers have been displaced by the warring parties~
scorched earth policy. ENDS\





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