Whisked away: Erdogan's program of kidnappings
Whisked away: Erdogan's program of kidnappings
Erdogan executed a sweeping, horrific crackdown, arresting hundreds of thousands of people — judges, professors, journalists, everybody — and cementing a personal dictatorship, so common in the world. Today, Turkey is the world’s leading jailer of journalists. The prisons bulge with all sorts of people who may have an independent thought — a thought different from Erdogan’s or the AKP’s -ruling party-. Last year, a joke made the rounds. A prisoner visits the prison library, requesting a certain book. The librarian says, “We don’t have the book. But we do have the author.”
llegal abductions and enforced disappearances in Turkey, often perpetrated by security services or clandestine groups with the approval or knowledge of the authorities, have recently made a comeback just when this abhorrent practice was thought be a thing of the past, primarily confined to the dark period of the 1990s, when Kurds were victimized by extrajudicial killings.
Thirteen people have reportedly been abducted in Turkey, 11 of them kidnapped in Ankara by National Intelligence Organization (MİT)-affiliated paramilitary forces that work with total impunity. The mysterious kidnappings in Turkey are bringing back fears of the enforced disappearances by state agencies in the mid-1990s.
A list of individuals missing since July 2016 can be found below:
1. Ayhan Oran (Intelligence Officer), miss- ing since November 1, 2016.
2. Mustafa Ozgür Gültekin (employee of the Competition Authority), missing since December 21, 2016.
3. Hüseyin Kötüce (employee of the Infor- mation and Communication Technolo- gies Authority), missing since February 28, 2017.
4. Mesut Geçer (Intelligence officer), miss- ing since March 26, 2017.
5. Turgut Çapan (Former employee of Turgut Ozal University), missing since March 31, 2017.
6. Onder Asan (teacher), abducted on April 1 and missing until May 12, 2017. Ever since in custody.
7. Cengiz Usta (teacher), missing since April 4, 2017.
8. Mustafa Ozben (lawyer), missing since May 9, 2017.
9. Fatih Kılıç (teacher), missing since May
Erdogan spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization would launch overseas “operations” against supporters of Fethullah Gulen, an elderly cleric who lives in exile in Pennsylvania.
“They will feel Turkey breathing down their neck,” Kalin told reporters in Ankara.
Dictatorships are not shy about harassing, capturing, or killing their critics in exile. They are rarely fussy about what they do on foreign soil. Erdogan's Turkey is very unshy and unfussy increasingly. Ibrahim Kalin said that the U.S. is not exempt from Turkey’s operations. Turkish government has established an agency with an extraordinarily blunt name: “Office for Human Abductions and Executions.” It is an arm of the Turkish intelligence organization, an organization known by the initials “MIT.” The country’s foreign minister. Turkey has retrieved 104 people from 21 different countries (by whatever means). And the government has its sights on many, many more.
To the AKP, every opponent or critic of the government is a “Gulenist.” You could be a secular leftist journalist, with no use for the Gulen movement. Still, you are a “Gulenist.” You are also a “terrorist.” Any opponent or critic is a “terrorist.” The government has imprisoned human-rights activists as “terrorists.” Among them is the director of the Turkish branch of Amnesty International, Idil Eser. Enes Kanter, too, has been labeled a “terrorist.” He is a player of the National Basketball Association.
The government has cast its net worldwide, looking to bring in any and all critics, under the rubric “Gulenist.” “We will return to the country one by one those Gulenists who have fled and now think they’re safe,” Erdogan said. “We will continue the fight against the Gulenists until we have completely eradicated them.”
He has several tools in his bag, several methods at his disposal. Some countries, he can induce to extradite his critics. His government might say, “An Airbus or two for this Gulenist or two.” Turkey has some money to throw around, and it exerts leverage over many countries. Americans may not think of Turkey as much of a power, as Schenkkan points out. But to other countries — Moldova, Gabon, Azerbaijan, Sudan — it is.
And where extradition is impossible or difficult, abduction will do.
It happened in Kosovo, dramatically. Six people — almost all of them teachers — were nabbed and immediately flown to Turkey. A CCTV camera caught one of the kidnappings. Two agents posed as cops, yanking Yusuf Karabina from his car. His wife, Yasemin, knowing what was happening, screamed for help. To no avail. Before long, her husband and the rest were on the plane to Turkey. They were tortured along the way, of course.
Said Erdogan, “Wherever they may go, we will wrap them up and bring them here, God willing. And here they will be held to account.” Reports of torture, from those who live to tell the tale, almost never vary, from dictatorship to dictatorship, year after year: beatings, sleep deprivation, isolation, electrodes on genitals, forced confessions, etc.
Turkish intelligence has operated fairly easily in countries such as Kosovo. It’s harder in countries with a sturdier rule of law. Two Turkish agents — “diplomats” — conspired to kidnap a Turkish-Swiss businessman. They were unable to bring their plan to fruition. Last summer, the Swiss government issued warrants for their arrest.
Enes Kanter, the basketball player, was targeted in Indonesia, while on a tour for his charitable foundation. Tipped off at 2:30 in the morning, he caught the next plane out, which was to Singapore. From there, he went to Romania — where he discovered that the Turkish government had canceled his passport. Helped by the U.S. State Department, the NBA, and other institutions, he made it back to America. Otherwise, he says, it might have ended very badly for him.
We remain concerned that the current political and security environment in Turkey is very much conducive to human rights violations, including enforced disappearances that especially single out members of the Gülen movement, which has been stigmatized by the hateful narrative of top officials, including President Erdoğan. The shameful remarks made by Erdoğan, who said Gülen movement participants “have no right to life”30 and that “people will punish them in the streets even after they serve time in prison,”31 further encourage crimes including enforced disappearances for the peaceful and law-abiding members of the Gülen movement.
We are worried that the reluctance of authorities to investigate past enforced disappearances has now become a source of further violations.
Turkey must adopt a comprehensive policy and a solid mechanism to fully address enforced disappearances at all levels, insure that the victims’ rights to the truth, justice, reparations and guarantees of non-recurrence are granted. Not only cases of Turkish nationals but also non-Turks such as migrants and refugees – especially Syrians and Yazidis -- who were disappeared while in Turkey under suspicious circumstances must be thoroughly investigated.
Erdoğan and his ruling party should immediately stop preventing Parliament from investigating enforced disappearances by blocking opposition motions to set up a commission to examine such allegations. Emergency rule, which has given rise to serious human rights violations in Turkey, including enforced disappearances, must be lifted. The immunities granted by the government to members of the security and intelligence services must be revoked so that they can be investigated for crimes. The government should stop implementing incommunicado detentions, halt the denial of access to detainees and do away with the practice of using secret locations for detention.
References:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/turkish-government-program-of-kidnappings/