Torture, arbitrary arrests among Turkey’s human rights issues, says U.S.

Turkey’s most significant human rights issues include including arbitrary killings, suspicious deaths of persons in custody, forced disappearances, torture and arbitrary arrest, the U.S. State Department said in its annual Human Rights Practices of 2020 country report.

The report pointed to the “continued detention of tens of thousands of persons, including opposition politicians and former members of parliament, lawyers, journalists, human rights activists’’ in the country.

Turkey maintains “significant problems with judicial independence; severe restrictions on freedom of expression, the press, and the internet, including violence and threats of violence against journalists, closure of media outlets, and unjustified arrests or criminal prosecution of journalists and others for criticizing government policies or officials, censorship,’’ the Turkey chapter of the report said.

The report also highlighted problems faced by the country’s judiciary, which limits judicial independence, including “intimidation and reassignment of judges and allegations of interference by the executive branch.’’

Bar association and other civil society organization representatives reported that police sometimes attended organizational meetings and recorded them, which the representatives interpreted as a means of intimidation.

The anti-terror laws of the country were used broadly against opposition political party members, human rights activists, media outlets, suspected Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) sympathizers, and “alleged Gulen movement members or groups affiliated with the Gulen movement,’’ it said.

The government continued to restrict foreign travel for some citizens accused of links to the Gulen movement or the failed 2016 coup attempt. In June authorities lifted passport restrictions for 28,075 individuals, in addition to the 57,000 lifted in 2019, although it remained unclear how many more remained unable to travel, the report added.

Ankara maintains the Gülen movement was behind the failed putsch and a long-running scheme to overthrow Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan by infiltrating Turkish institutions, particularly the military, police, and judiciary.

Curfews imposed by local authorities in response to counter-PKK operations and the country’s military operation in northern Syria also restricted freedom of movement, as did restrictions on interprovincial travel due to COVID-19 precautions, the report said.

Over 77,000 people accused of links to the group have been arrested and another 150,000 public employees suspended or sacked as part of a worldwide crackdown on the group by the Turkish government following the failed putsch.

Ankara has also cracked down human rights and civil society organizations, groups promoting LGBTI rights, the report said, as well women’s groups through administrative burdens and the threat of large fines.

Critics accuse Turkish government officials, including President Erdoğan, of targeting the country’s LGBT+ community.

Last year Turkish courts rejected an appeals against a ban on the Istanbul Pride march. In early 2021, Erdoğan said there was “no such thing as the LGBT (community)”.

Syrians under temporary protection risked the loss of temporary protection status and a possible bar on re-entry into the country if they chose to travel to a third country or return temporarily to Syria.

In October 2019 the country’s Peace Spring military operation displaced more than 215,000 residents of villages along the country’s border with Syria in areas of Syria affected by the operation, the report said.