kimon07 wrote:Tim Drayton wrote:kimon07 wrote:'Retaliation Campaign': Erdogan Punishes Protesters in Turkey
By Oezlem Gezer and Maximilian Popp
Following mass anti-government protests in Turkey, Ankara is now taking revenge on its critics. Activists and demonstrators are being investigated and intimidated, while journalists are getting fired and insubordinate civil servants transferred far afield.
Read more:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/eur ... ernational
Even before the Gezi protests started, Turkey's prisons were full to bursting point with political prisoners.
How much further can it go?
For as long as the USA will let it. Until they decide to pull the carpet under his feet. Remember Mumbarak?
Maybe. I read wıth interest an interview published last year with Selçuk Kozağaçlı, General Chair of the Contemporary Lawyers Association in Turkey, about the increasing use of judicial means as a tool for political repression, and he made the comment in this interview:
Iki yılda bir siyasal alanda 5 bin gözaltı yapan, 3 bin 5 yüz tutuklama yapan bir akla hapishane yetişmesi mümkün değil. Mahkeme yetişmesimümkün değil, çok açık. 105 bin yatakları var zannediyorum, tutuklu sayısı şu anda 130 bine çıkmış durumda.
[my translation]
It is impossible for prisons to keep up with a mentality that makes 5,000 arrests and 3,500 detentions in two years. It is impossible for the courts to keep up; this is abundantly clear. I believe there are 105,000 beds; the number of detainees has now risen to 130,000.
Note that the above statement was made before the latest wave of protests.
It is true that they built a special prison and court complex at Silivri near Istanbul to hold and try the defendants in the Ergenekon trial, and they are apparently going to build another prison and court complex in the same area for the KCK trial (both mainly political trials, in my opinion). So, sure, they can build new prisons, but the system was already creaking before Gezi came along. Erdoğan has decided to solve this issue with yet more repression and, of course, history is littered with examples of the successful crushing of protest in this manner. On the other hand, this strategy does not always succeed. So far, we see ever more protestors coming forward to take the place of those arrested and detained; in a way, Gezi was a continuation of this process. On the other hand, there are problems for Erdoğan and his regime with this strategy. He wants for the time being to carry on with the charade of appearing to take the EU accession process forward, so Turkey can hardly withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, so everything that happens will eventually be subject to review at the ECHR. Similarly, his regime is unlikely to want to lose face by withdrawing from other similar international conventions, and it is instructive to note that a United Nations commission recently pronounced that the defendants in the Balyoz trial (another political trial, in my view) were denied the right to a fair trial as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These factors make it harder to simply crush all opposition in the way that some dictators can. It is not easy to predict where things are going, but I hope and believe that Erdoğan is digging his own grave with the mistakes that he is making.
