Turkish army murdering Turks

[Bengal_Tiger]

Suspicious Deaths Continue in Turkish Army


By Uzay Bulut 19 hours ago


ANKARA, Turkey Activists and the families and lawyers of many Turkish soldiers who reportedly committed suicide or were killed in accidents doubt the official version of the deaths, noting that many of the dead were either minority Kurds or Alevis.

Most of the soldiers who lost their lives in the army were Kurdish or Alevis. Their families do not believe that it is a coincidence that all those accidents happen to their children, said Ergin Dogru, head of the Dersim branch of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP).

The deaths in the army are not investigated sufficiently and the military courts do not give just rulings about the cases, Dogru complained to Rudaw.

The Turkish Ministry of Defence says that 2,221 soldiers lost their lives in suicides or accident deaths between 1992 and 2012.

Last year, out of the 42 soldiers who were officially reported to have killed themselves, 39 were Kurdish and one was Armenian, according to Mazlum Orak, a lawyer with Mazlum-Der (Organization of Human Rights and Solidarity for Oppressed People).

I am the lawyer of the family of Aydin Dere, a Kurdish soldier who lost his life in the army. A forensic institute first gave a report that he had committed suicide but a year later another forensic center said he was shot in the back and killed by someone else, Orak told Rudaw.

For 12 years the military prosecutors have done nothing to progress the investigations, he complained. Lately, his family was invited by the defence minister to his office and told that the ministry could do nothing for such incidents, Orak recounted.

Many irregularities have been revealed about the deaths. Some of the soldiers were apparently shot in the back or in the back of the head. Some were shot more than once, and then right-handed soldiers were found with bullet wounds on left temples. It was found that some even had undergone surgery to hide head wounds before their funerals.

Based on the number that was announced in May 2012, in the last 22 years, 2,221 conscripts have committed suicide. This equals 100 conscripts per year or one conscript for every three or four days, said the Soldiers Rights Initiative, which accepts reports from former conscripts on its website (askerhaklari.com).

The group has exposed numerous cases where soldiers were killed or beaten in the army. One of them was Orhan Abravci, who was disabled after being beaten harshly by his commander. Another is the case of Ugur Kantar, who died after days of torture in a military disciplinary cell.

Mahsun Yap, a Kurdish private born in the province of Dersim, lost his life in the Edirne infantry brigade during his compulsory military service. His family does not believe the report that says he had killed himself.

The family was first told that he was hit by a military vehicle, followed by another statement saying the military vehicle overturned, three soldiers were squashed and Masum Yap died. Then, military officials at the Istanbul Forensic Institute said that he died due to internal bleeding, according to Dogru.

Tolga Islam, a spokesperson for Soldiers Rights, told Rudaw that the army is responsible for all kinds of soldiers deaths, even suicides.

When a soldier commits suicide, it is the army which prepares the conditions for suicide and gives the gun to the soldiers, he said.

We receive complaints from numerous former privates who say they thought about suicide while serving in the army because of mistreatment. So, there is a direct relation between applying pressure on the soldiers and driving them to suicide, Islam said.

Suspicious Deaths Continue in Turkish Army


1. The Turkish army is a fascist and criminal organization which has carried out what some would call a form of cultural genocide against Kurds i.e. 2-3 million Kurds made refugees, 3,000 Kurdish villages destroyed.

2. The Turkish army which is called the "TSK" (Turk Silahli Kuvvetleri) should be "abolished" in the sense that:

a: It should have a new name.

b: It should have new logos.

The words used to describe it are in fact Arabic. Silah is Arabic for weapon, Kuvvetleri is from "Quwwat" (powers), the suffix "leri", being a plural suffix.

3. The cruelty, inhumanity and sheer barbarism that the Turkish army inflicts on its own ordinary soldiers, even ethnic Turks, is unmatched by any other country on earth.

4. The Turkish government must establish an intelligence wing, part of MIT or separate from it, that has agents inside every battalion to track down criminal TSK officers that torture and murder Turks.

5. It must also abolish military service.

6. So far the Erdogan government has made commendable steps to try and reign in the brutal and fascist Turkish military but these steps are not enough.



Cetin Dogan, one of the brutal Turkish army generals who has now been put in prison by the centre-right Turkish government.



Dani Rodrik, son in law of Dogan. Rodrik and his wife have targeted the Turkish government with an international propaganda campaign but never pointed out any of the atrocities that the army their father/father in-law was a senior general in carried out and still carries out.



Centre-right Turkish prime minister, Erdogan who has been widely praised for his democratization policies including greater rights for Kurds, Christians, practising Muslims and others. Kemalists have often spoken of killing him. His government must have the courage to abolish military service and end Turkish army torture and murder of Turks.

[Bengal_Tiger]

Turkish Troops Face Torture and Suicide in NATO's Second-Largest Army


More Turkish soldiers have perished from suicide and abuse than from combat in the last decade, but the EU aspirant has done little to stem the crisis.

NOAH BLASERMAY 2 2013, 3:14 PM ET



Ugur Kantar spent 80 days in a coma before dying from wounds inflicted by his torturers. (Photo courtesy of the author)



ISTANBUL -- The night private Ugur Kantar died in an Ankara military hospital, his father Aydin Kantar knew all too well who his son's killers were.

He also knew that he would never see them in jail, because the men who had ordered Ugur's torture - which lasted for three days and ended with Ugur in a coma, abandoned and handcuffed to a chair in the blinding Mediterranean sun - were high ranking military officers and effectively above the law.

Suicide rates are 2.5 times higher among conscripts than other Turkish males in the same age group.

Two years after his son's death, Aydin says the officers suspected in the incident are still no closer to facing trial, a bitter example of the thousands of unsettled rights abuses in NATO's second-largest army.

Work by activists in recent months has exposed a long list of foul play against conscripts in Turkey's 700,000-strong armed forces, including a tradition of physical abuse, rare but life-threatening torture, and a suicide epidemic which has claimed 965 lives in the last decade - more than the 601 troops killed fighting Kurdish separatists in the same period.

Criminal trials involving those incidents can drag on for years, laments Aydin, who says his son's case is still idling in a military court and that his family is "waiting for justice so we can begin to grieve."

That wait comes as Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has claimed major victories in improving civilian oversight of its military.

This May, the government is set to conclude a trial of top brass accused of planning to overthrow the moderate Islamist AKP government, for which state prosecutors have suggested life sentences for several key players -- a verdict once inconceivable in a country known for its untouchable military and history of army coups.

But as Ankara claims that the high-profile coup trial, known as the Ergenekon case, has improved civilian oversight of the military - and as critics call it a bid by the AKP to imprison innocent secular journalists and academics - the trial has camouflaged deeper reforms needed in the EU aspirant's military, argues Lale Kemal, a journalist who specializes in civil-military relations



Emre Tanik with his nephew during the summer of 2012

"At heart, the Turkish army is a cold war era, conscription-based military that hasn't yet entered the 21st century," she said. "Its secretive culture allows very grave rights abuses, but amid the larger political battle, those concerns have remained the military's internal affairs."

Military foul play is increasingly brought to light by conscript rights activists, but "nobody knows how widespread abuse is, and our group can't keep up with the known cases," said Tolga Islam, head of the newly opened abuse watchdog Soldier Rights' Platform.

The group has documented 1,399 claims of maltreatment since it opened two years ago, and it says incidents range from episodes of minor hazing to cases like Ugur's, with around 40 percent of instances involving physical violence by superiors or senior troops.

While the death of Ugur in 2011 and private Murat Polat in 2005 are the only widely accepted cases of fatal beatings, Islam claims that beatings and other comparatively minor punishments "instill a feeling of arbitrary control," among conscripts and prevent troops from reporting mistreatment.

"Your superiors control the tiny world of your barracks," said one active-duty conscript who claims his sergeant beat him in May 2012. "It's best to forget and carry on."

The chilling effect is reinforced by the procedure for reporting abuse, said retired military judge Umit Kardas. "A soldier can only complain to the officer directly above the person who abused him, so he is likely appealing to someone who already knows about the mistreatment," he said. "The system is designed to protect career officers."

The army's culture of secrecy and impunity is reinforced by its own court system, which allows officers to remain above legal suspicion in criminal trials.

Conscripts who served with Ugur in northern Cyprus have testified in the torture trial that his commanding officer, first lieutenant Serdar Akdemir, routinely sent troops to the military prison where Ugur and others were tortured, and that base commander Bergay Turgut ignored complaints of mistreatment happening under his command.

But the court has declined to investigate those claims, and the six troops currently facing trial for Ugur's death are all former enlisted soldiers who manned the base prison.

"The trial has forced people to speak openly of torture," said Aydin. "But while the court acknowledges what happened it is still helping the people at root of this system escape punishment."

Even when superiors are found guilty of misconduct, their punishments are typically pecuniary.

In 2009 private Orhan Abravci was beaten so severely by his sergeant that he sustained near-paralyzing spinal injuries.

The sergeant was fined 630 euro by a court, while Abravci's lieutenant, who witnessed the attack, was acquitted. "Both these men are still serving in the military," adds Islam.

Crimes between fellow conscripts can similarly remain unaddressed, Islam stresses, pointing to the slaying of Turkish-Armenian private Sevag Balikci by fellow private Kivanc Agaoglu in 2011.

A military court concluded in March that Agaoglu mistakenly killed Balikci while "joking around" during a drill, but Turkey's small Armenian community claims that the incident - which occurred on the 96th anniversary of the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman forces in 1915 -- was more likely a hate crime.

The military's rights issues also include an epidemic of conscript suicides, which have numbered 965 in the last 10 years.

When 20-year-old private Emre Tanik committed suicide in late 2012, his brother Sakir Tanik said he was "immediately pressured" during a meeting with Emre's commander to conclude "everything had been done to prevent his 'tragic' death."

The version of events enraged Sakir, who said that Emre -- an American citizen who spent his teenage years in California -- had been turned down by the U.S. military for depression and should have never served in the Turkish army.

Turkish doctors indeed flagged Emre for depression when he entered the army and prescribed him anti-depressants, but then repeatedly denied a request to renew his medication.

Out of medicine and suffering from withdrawal, Emre told Sakir over Skype that a psychiatrist had suggested he "wait for another appointment in a month" when he told the doctor he had recurring thoughts of suicide.

"He was giving very clear signals that he was suicidal, and our mother even drove out to warn Emre's commander that something was terribly wrong," said Sakir.

Just days after his doctor's appointment, Emre was ordered to serve a solitary eight-hour guard duty, during which he killed himself with his service rifle.

Emre's death is an example of why suicide rates are 2.5 times higher among conscripts than other Turkish males in the same age group, said retired military psychiatrist Nevzat Tarhan.

Tarhan claims that army doctors usually get five to ten minutes to council a patient for mental heath issues and may see more than 50 patients in a day.

"Depressed conscripts are on their own. The military doesn't take mental health seriously, and psychiatrists only give medicine, not treatment," he said.

That is unlikely to change as long as the military sees abuse cases as accidents and suicides as tragedies, said journalist Kemal. "There's a deep lack of accountability in army ranks that will only change if the army justice system changes."

Kemal also emphasizes, however, that the military's political weakening has allowed victims of military abuse to speak out, winning at least one important rights victory.

Last year, testimony by Aydin and other victims before parliament's rights commission led that body to shut down the military prisons where Ugur and others were tortured.

"But a decades-old culture of impunity can only be limited, not reversed by closing down a building," said Islam.

The rights activist also voiced concern over a decision this year that Ankara's forthcoming ombudsman's office, which will track rights abuses in the government, will not be allowed to cover military cases.

Ex-army judge Kardas agrees that an independent investigator is essential for overseeing the military justice system, but he also suggests that abuse and suicide cases might simply be transferred to civil courts. "Most victims are ultimately civilians in uniform," he said.

Even if such a change comes too late to change his son's trial, Aydin believes it would help put his family's sufferings to rest. "I buried my suffering to speak out against this injustice," he said. "I don't want it to happen to another family's son ever again."

Turkish Troops Face Torture and Suicide in NATO's Second-Largest Army - Noah Blaser - The Atlantic

[Bengal_Tiger]

Soldier tortured in same military prison as Kantar sought deputies' help

A young man who served in the same military unit in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC) as another private who was killed after being torture during his draft service sought the help of Parliament, reports on Sunday said.
Pvt. Uğur Kantar was killed after enduring physical abuse and torture at a “disco,” slang for a disciplinary prison in the military. He died on Thursday at İstanbul's Gülhane Military Academy of Medicine (GATA), 80 days after he was nearly beaten to death by his superiors. Military prosecutors have launched an investigation into the identity of the alleged torturers, but it has emerged that Kantar was not their only victim.

A young man who served in the same unit as Kantar, going by the initials G.H., petitioned the parliamentary Human Rights Commission during his military service. G.H. said he was subjected to various methods of torture in the disco, including being forced to wade through a sewer canal. He wrote:

“Hell begins after the person who delivers you there turns their back and leaves. They put prison clothes on me and then started hitting my hips with batons. They opened up a lid and forced me to go in there. It was full of human feces in there. You couldn't put your feet on the ground because of the sewer rats. They kept me in there for about 10 minutes, and ordered me to get out. Then they wanted me to do a low crawl for 50 meters with all that dirt on me. Then they watered me with a hose at the disco and left me there.”

Another excerpt from G.H.'s petition reads:

“They treated us like animals. They made us clean the toilets after dinner. We were forced to clean the hole of the toilet seat with a tiny brush, much like a toothbrush. You could hear people weeping under the sheets every night. We only had about three hours to sleep at night, and we spent those three hours crying.”


In related developments, Justice and Development Party (AK Party) Sakarya deputy Ayhan Sever Üstün, the head of the Human Rights Commission, said the commission will investigate the Kantar incident. Üstün said:

“His father visited me and asked for help. He was beaten. Then they made him sit in the sun for two hours and poured hot water on him. His father was angry because the only response he got to his queries to the military was that ‘two privates had been arrested' over Kantar's death.” Üstün added that the commission had received many complaints from abused draftees, particularly in İstanbul and the western provinces. Üstün said most of the complaints included beatings and verbal insults. “We have to stop this. We have to end abuse in the military so that young people who are sent off to the military by friends and family joyously can come home in the same way.”

Soldier tortured in same military prison as Kantar sought deputies' help - Today's Zaman, your gateway to Turkish daily news



Shaheed Ugur Kantar (rahmatullahi 'alaih) murdered by the fascist Turkish military.