The Kurds of Turkey: Killings, Disappearances and Torture

The Kurds of Turkey: Killings, Disappearances and Torture

Kurds in Turkey have been killed, tortured and disappeared at an appalling rate since the coalition government of Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel took office in November 1991.  In addition, many of their cities  have  been  brutally  attacked  by  security  forces,  hundreds  of  their  villages  have  been  forcibly evacuated, their ethnic identity continues to be attacked, their rights to free expression denied and their political freedom placed in jeopardy.
 
This  is  the  third  report  that  Helsinki Watch  has  issued  since  1988  on  the  plight  of  the Kurdish minority in southeast Turkey.1  It describes some of the events that have taken place since Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel's coalition government took office and  their effects on the Turkish Kurds in southeast Turkey.

By way of background, Helsinki Watch reported in 1988:
 
The Kurds -- there are some twenty million in the world today -- have never had a country of their own, although  they lay claim  to a  large region which they call Kurdistan and have shared a common language, religion and culture for thousands of years.  The oil-rich, mountainous region that the Kurds inhabit was carved up after World War I and parceled out to Turkey, Iran and Iraq.  Kurds are now living in all of those countries and, in smaller numbers, in Syria and the USSR.  The largest group of Kurds is in Turkey, but it is absent from Turkey's official census figures because the Turkish government denies the very existence of the Kurds, whom they refer to as "mountain
Turks." ...