Turkey's record in Kurdistan is a grim warning to Afghan women
The Guardian, May 28, 2002
Isabel Hilton
Next month, on a date yet to be agreed, Britain will hand over command of the 18-nation UN security force in Afghanistan to Turkey. The arrangement was agreed, not without reservations on many sides, last April.
Meanwhile, with the political and financial support (upwards of 228 million dollars) of the Bush Administration, Turkey will shortly assume command of the multi-nation UN security force in Afghanistan. In the past Turkey backed one of the worst Afghan warlords now being “rehabilitated” by the US, General Abdul Rashid Dostum. Dostum’s troops were notorious violators of women and human rights across the board. Then again, Turkey’s deplorable human rights record against its Kurdish citizens rivals that of Saddam Hussein’s. Of course, former ally Saddam Hussein no longer receives massive US aid as does Turkey.
CommonDreams.org, June 1, 2002Superficially, it seems like a reasonable idea. Turkey, though secular at government level, is a Muslim country with a large army and aspirations to enter the western fold. It is a long-standing member of Nato and an aspirant member of the EU.
Washington was keen on Turkey's leadership of the International Security Assistance Force, not least because it allows the US to argue that the Afghan campaign is not, as is widely believed in the Muslim world, a war against Islam. President Bush asked Congress to pay Turkey $228m to take the job on. The vice-president, Dick Cheney, turning a blind eye to the State Department's own human rights report, felt moved to reiterate the administration's support for Turkey's application to join the EU.
So much for what Turkey and the US are getting out of it. What is Afghanistan getting? Not much, it seems. The Karzai government has not hidden its anxieties about Turkey's support in the past for General Abdul Rashid Dostum, now deputy defence minister, whose passion for tying people to tank tracks was documented in painful detail by the journalist Ahmed Rashid. Gen Dostum's men, followers of Afghan affairs will remember, also had a remarkably poor record when it came to rape and sexual torture of Afghan women.
How much hope is there that Turkey will provide protection from such abuses? Not much, according to a recent report by the Kurdish Human Rights Project. It claims that Turkish security forces systematically rape and sexually abuse women in Turkey. When victims complain, it is they, not the rapists, who face criminal prosecution.
The document is a trial observation report - not, sadly, a trial of army or police officers for rape, but of women who spoke out and were then charged with undermining the unity of the state. The charges arose from a conference organised in June 2000 by several NGOs to address what they said was systematic sexual violence perpetrated by state officials against women in custody.
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) condemned Turkey for declaring allegations of terrorism against Taliban as unjustified and baseless, said a RAWA spokeswoman here Friday. A Turkish government special envoy Edymer Erman, who is visiting Kabul, said terrorism allegations against Taliban are unjustified and baseless and that there exists no evidence to prove the same.
The spokeswoman ridiculed the Turkish envoy saying that the (Erman) will only accept Taliban as terrorists after they have killed the remaining population of Afghanistan. She added: "Or they will accept Taliban as terrorists, if they (Taliban) extend their terrorist activities to other parts of the world, including Turkey."
The News International, May.21, 2001The Turkish government's response to the powerful evidence presented was to initiate investigations against 19 of the speakers and subsequently to bring legal proceedings against them for "denigrating" the security forces. A second investigation led to even more serious charges against five speakers, this time before the state security court, for daring to claim that Kurdish women were disproportionately the victims.
By mentioning the fact that Kurdish women were raped in custody and during village raids, the state argued, the conference organisers, lawyers and victims had "incited people to enmity and hatred by pointing to class, racial, religious, confessional or regional differences". The charges before the state council carry a maximum sentence of six years.
It is no coincidence that many Kurdish women are raped. Rape, as the lesson of the Balkans reminds us, is a useful tool in the destruction of a rival ethnic group. Given the social and legal penalties for speaking out, it is a reasonable assumption that the documented cases of rape and sexual torture of Kurdish women represent the tip of the iceberg. Even so, they reveal that sexual torture is routinely used against women in custody, and frequently involves their children and other family members.
Until recently the Turkish government denied that rape and sexual torture took place. Then came a small admission of "isolated cases".
In November last year, an intrepid group held a further conference to mark the International Day Against Violence Against Women. As a result, Eren Keskin, co-founder of a project that supplies legal aid to women raped or sexually abused by state security forces, has been charged with disseminating "separatist propaganda". The second hearing in the case is set for July, by which time, if things go according to plan, Turkish forces will be in charge of the security of the women of Afghanistan.
The Kurdish report has received little attention, but then the abuse of women in Afghanistan was scarcely a high priority in Washington before September 11. Afterwards, of course, even Laura Bush was moved to protest about the suffering of her Afghan sisters.
Now that the Taliban have been ousted from Kabul, the continued suffering of the women of Afghanistan, like that of Kurdish women in Turkey, is no longer useful. The ongoing abuse is merely an embarrassment to Afghanistan's western "liberators", rather as the suffering of Kurdish women is an embarrassment as long as President Bush needs the Turkish military in charge of peacekeeping in Afghanistan.
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