2024 Special Report on Testimonies, Interviews, Informant-Making, and Abductions through Coercion and Threats
Human Rights Association shared its special reports with the public opinion on “Testimonies, Interviews, Informant-Making, and Abductions through Coercion and Threats” in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. The current report includes applications made to İHD headquarters and branches in 2022, 2023 and 2024.
As it was underlined in the previous reports, such practices have become a repressive policy of the state following the state of emergency (SoE) that was declared following the coup d’état attempt of 15 July 2016, while these practices constituted multiple offenses including threat, insult, torture, deprivation of liberty, malfeasance in office that are proscribed in the Turkish Penal Code (TPC). Applications filed and the news reported in the press reveal that especially after the coup attempt in 2016 violations in this field have increased, complaints have not been effectively investigated and perpetrators have not been punished. It is observed that the overall policy of impunity in Turkey proves to be the basic approach to such cases.
All these practices violate the right to liberty and security of person enshrined in Article 19 of the Constitution, Articles 3 and 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 9 of the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights. While the Constitutional Court defines “the right to liberty and security of person as a fundamental right which guarantees that the state cannot interfere with the liberty of individuals arbitrarily,” the European Convention on Human Rights refer to it as the most significant right in a democratic society.
While the applications filed before IHD and news reflected in the media correspond to a little portion of such practices, individuals sometimes cannot share what they went through even with their families and hide the incident out of fear and think that they may accordingly protect their safety of life. There are individuals who want to leave Turkey and live abroad having abstained from initiating legal proceedings because of such fears. However, criminal complaints filed with the Public Prosecutor’s Office result mostly in non-prosecution decisions, without sufficient investigation and examination, on the grounds that the perpetrator(s) could not be identified and no preventive measures were taken to ensure the safety of the person’s life. For these reasons, there are people who are forced to leave Turkey and live in another country because they refrain from taking legal action.
As Human Rights Association, we have taken many initiatives to put an end to the state’s policy of impunity and to punish the perpetrators responsible for such cases. Although applications filed before İHD are conveyed to the Ministry of Interior, Law Enforcement Surveillance Commission and to the Human Rights Inquiry Commission of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (GNAT), no effective investigation has been carried out so far. Human Rights Association has been applying to the Law Enforcement Surveillance Commission since 2019 but none of the 52 total applications have been taken into consideration and no suspected law enforcement officers have been investigated as a result of these applications.
According to data collected by the Documentation Center of the İHD, in the years between 2022-2024, a total of 87 applications were submitted to İHD headquarters and its branches on informant-making and abduction. When we look at the complaints of the applicants; persons who introduce themselves as police officers try to get together with the applicants with offers such as ‘chatting, drinking tea, being friends’, stating that they can benefit financially from being an informant, threatening the applicants who participate in these conversations but do not accept their requests with threats to their family, work, health, private life, intimidating them with detention and arrest. In cases where applicants are under detention, they are taken to an interrogation room at certain intervals and forced to give an unrecorded statement before their legal statements are taken and without the presence of their lawyers. Those who are detained are intimidated with the threat of arrest or that they will be followed at all times and will not be left alone even if they are released. These arbitrary practices sometimes result also in abduction, torture and ill-treatment; people, being forced into a car, are abducted blindfolded by those who are unknown to them, beaten for days and then released in a desolate place.
Considering altogether the information provided in our report, the summaries of the applications and the current attitude of the official authorities, it is obvious that such cases are not isolated incidents, but are used as a systematic method. We emphasize once again that such practices, which contradict the fundamental values of human rights and are prohibited by law and international conventions, must be immediately abandoned, and we once again state that we will maintain our persistent follow-up in order to put an end to such violations.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Our recommendations put forth in our previous reports are still valid.
- The chief public prosecutor’s offices in particular, the Ministry of Interior, the Human Rights Inquiry Commission of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, the Ombudsman Institution, the Human Rights and Equality Institution of Turkey, human rights boards of the governorates should fulfill their founding objectives in relation to human rights violations and contribute to an effective judicial and administrative investigations through ex officio follow-ups on the violations cited in this report.
- Human Rights Inquiry Commission of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey should establish a sub-committee to supervise the law enforcement and review applications.
- Security and intelligence units should carry out their activities in accordance with the law, the method of obtaining evidence from individuals through pressure and threats should be abandoned, and the Security and Intelligence Commission of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey should establish a sub-commission to inquire the illegal activities of intelligence organisations.
- The Law Enforcement Surveillance Commission established under the Ministry of Interior should operate in accordance with the criteria of the United Nations and Council of Europe and ensure the accountability of the law enforcement.
Human Rights Association