Recent Turkish history has been dominated by the Turkish state's failed experiment in maintaining security through
repression.
Successive governments have made
some progress towards establishing parliamentary democracy and fundamental freedoms, but national security -- internal as well
as external -- has consistently been
left to the discretion of the security forces. They have treated international human rights standards and Turkish law with
equal disdain.
As a result, the human rights picture in Turkey is bleak. Torture or ill-treatment have long been routinely inflicted on
people detained for
common criminal offences as well as on political charges. "Disappearance" and extrajudicial execution are new patterns of
violation which
appeared in the early 1990s and have since claimed hundreds of lives. Turkish citizens do not enjoy true freedom of
expression. During the
past six years scores of prisoners of conscience have served terms of imprisonment for expressing their non-violent opinions.
Hundreds
more, including writers and artists, are being tried in State Security Courts and threatened with imprisonment because they
dared to express
their political views.
From Amnesty International No Security Without Human
Rights
