The father was allowed to visit home, however, being under heavy police and army control, his security guards did not allow him to talk in his native language Kurdish at home. Even the phone calls he received for his daughter’s death was monitored by the cops and not allowed if the caller spoke Kurdish.
Kurdish political prisoner barred from speaking Kurdish during daughter’s funeral
It is customary in Turkey to allow convicts to attend the funeral of a family member. Salih Altunışık, a 69-year-old political prisoner in Turkish prisons who has already spent 28 years behind bars was also granted a similar permission when his daughter Zeynep Altunışık passed away. However, the prosecutor’s office took their time to grant the permission, allowing him to attend the funeral three days after the burial.
Police and the army guards make sure no Kurdish is spoken
In Muslim countries, the funerals and burials happen fast. By the time Altunışık made it home, his daughter was buried. However, by a strange decision, and giving the reason of “legal requirement” he was banned from visiting the grave.
The father was allowed to visit home, however, being under heavy police and army control, his security guards did not allow him to talk in his native language Kurdish at home. Even the phone calls he received for his daughter’s death was monitored by the cops and not allowed if the caller spoke Kurdish.
Turkish government takes over municipalities and fires workers
The daughter who passed away, Zeynep Altunışık, had been the employee of the local government, the municipality, in Batman. As now it is customary in Turkey, when a pro-Kurdish local government is elected, the Turkish central government of the AKP party dissolves it from the top and appoints its own, unelected, AKP party controlled stewards. This new appointed AKP municipality officers immediately raids the assets of the local government forcing it to near bankruptcy as the corrupt officials grant contracts to AKP friendly businesses. Many of these contracts and procurements are not necessary and is used only as a boondoggle for AKP friendly and religious businesses. It was proven in many municipalities that were similarly taken over by Erdoğan’s Turkish government’s top down operation that this take-over was accompanied by corruption. Many stewards bought hundreds or thousands of dollars’ worth of meals, snacks and sweets from AKP friendly merchants. Others decorated the offices with luxurious furniture, including personal marble bathrooms for the new officers. The whole operation would revolve around breaking the support of the people to the opposition parties and bankrupting their open, democratic and transparent governance in the Kurdish provinces.
These operations usually entail firing of the staff. Salih Altunışık’s daughter was the victim of this “cleansing” when the Batman local municipality was placed under stewardship of the AKP’s central, corrupt, government. She was fired, became sick and passed away. Her brother had also passed away from a similar brain tumor seven years ago.
Political prisoner father tortured and wrongly convicted
Father Altunışık had been convicted by a military court with a very long trial period. Even the European Human Rights Court had a ruling on the case and Turkey was condemned for the unjust prosecutions. The ruling exposed that Turkey did not properly collect evidence for the cases on hand and similar trials. Nearly all cases handled by Turkey and its military courts involved heavy torture of the defendants, many of them Kurdish citizens who barely spoke Turkish. In all cases during the reign of the government terror of 1990’s the defendants were barred from defending themselves in their native language of Kurdish. The courts had ordered every defendant to speak Turkish, the official language, and considered defense in Kurdish as ”gibberish” because Turkey did not consider Kurdish a language.
The family has taken the case to the European Human Rights Court and are waiting for their trial to set the father, Salih, to be freed.
While waiting for the European decision, Altunışık’s wife said he was only given 9 hours for visiting his grieving family and home. He wasn’t even allowed to use the entire 9 hours because 4 hours of the visitation was spent for travelling. The police and the soldiers accompanied him at all times, preventing him or anybody around him, including those who called him on the phone, from speaking in Kurdish.
Sendika.org News (M.B.)