In a letter to the “UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment,” and other related UN bodies, organizations reiterated their concern of keeping a disabled politician with serious health problems amid the COVID-19 pandemic in prison. The letter explained that this treatment was against all internal laws and international standards.
Appeal for Political Prisoner Aysel Tuğluk in Turkey
Turkish regime has its way of dealing with descent and political opposition. It is notorious for disregarding the rule of law, the presumption of innocence, ignoring its own high court ruling, and dismissing the European High Court decision against its signed treaties promising to uphold its judgments.
Some political prisoners pay a much higher price than others if they have violated the chauvinistic, nationalist code against the so-called Turkish race, or Turkishness, or against the Turkish state. If the regime decides these codes were violated, all bets are off, and no law or rule or decency can protect the victim’s rights.
Aysel Tuğluk is a prisoner in Kocali District in Turkey. She has lost her memory and was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Forty-three judicial, human rights, and bar associations worldwide have appealed to the UN to call attention to her health condition and against keeping her in prison.
Aysel Tuğluk has been the target of the Turkish State, as other Kurdish activists have experienced, for struggling against the treatment of Kurds by the same. Her first conviction came in 2007 for using the Kurdish Language, banned in Turkey since the late 1930s. Turks considered the native language of the Kurds, who were the 25% of its population, to be against its national interest and, for security reasons, banned its usage. Turkish state and law also denied an entity or ethnicity called Kurdish and maintained that no such population existed on the face of the earth.
She was also sentenced in 2009 for not condemning the Kurdish fighters as terrorists and calling them heroes for fighting for freedom.
Tuğluk was elected to the parliament in 2007 as a deputy from Diyarbakır, a province with Kurds in the majority. This prevented her from being thrown into prison due to the MPs’ immunity during their tenure. However, the Turkish regime lifted her immunity and banned her from politics for five years. Although she denied any affiliation to the outlawed Kurdish armed organization PKK, her political party and herself became the target of state terror.
In 2012 she was charged and convicted under a law that punishes “Those who commit a crime with an organization while not being a member of the same.”
In 2018 the Turkish regime intensified its attacks against the women politician and sentenced her to 10 years for, this time, “being the leader of a terror organization.” She represented two legal, democratic, and open organizations, the Democratic Society Congress (DTK) and the Peoples’ Democratic Party. Both organizations focus on equality, poverty, human rights, and injustice.
After her medical situation deteriorated in prison, lawyers from the Peoples’ Democratic Party and her lawyers presented an independent report from the Kocaeli University Department of Forensics that stated,
“Kocaeli University Department of Forensic Medicine issued a committee report indicating that ‘her illness has a chronic and progressive course; there may be problems with the adequacy of medical support and care in prison conditions; she cannot lead her life alone in the conditions of the penal institution and; thus, the execution of her sentence should be deferred.”
However, The Forensic Medicine Institution, in contradiction to the independent academic report, concluded that
“The execution of Aysel Tuğluk’s sentence can continue in prison conditions by enabling her to receive treatment and regular medical checks at the polyclinic at recommended intervals.”
This contradictory position was expressed in the letter to the UN indicating that the insistence to keep her in prison was political and not medical:
“Immediate release of Aysel Tuğluk and other detainees and convicts in similar situations, who continue to be held in prison despite her very serious illness, to raise concerns about the rights of detainees and convicts to health care, to ensure that a sufficient number of medical personnel can carry out their work freely without being subjected to interference, We demand that human rights organizations and non-governmental organizations specialized in this field be allowed to visit and audit by the Turkish government.”
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