“Disappearances” and political killings: human rights crisis of the 1990s: a manual for action – Chapter C-5: Turkey: Responses to an emerging pattern of extrajudicial executions (pre-publication version)

Since mid-1991 more than 300 people active in the legal opposition to the government or suspected of having contacts with the Kurdish Workers’ Party, (PKK), have been killed, either directly by, or with the collusion of the Turkish security forces, principally in the ten provinces in southeast Turkey under emergency rule. This report documents the rise of political killings in the southeast, both in the towns and the countryside, citing several cases, including Ramazan Aslan and Vedat Aydin; and the state of impunity in which they are committed as a result of the failures of the prosecution service. Members of the Turkish Human Rights Association (THRA) and journalists who report these violations are themselves increasingly the victims of harassment and killings.