21 - 27 December 2000
Issue No.513
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 21 - 27 December 2000 Issue No.513 |
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Riot police up in arms
By Gareth JenkinsThe Turkish authorities last week vowed to punish the ringleaders of a virtual mutiny by the country's riot police in which thousands staged illegal marches through Turkey's cities, manhandled their superiors and chanted ultra-nationalist slogans.
The demonstrations were triggered by the assassination last Tuesday of two members of the Istanbul riot police in an ambush by the outlawed Turkish Communist Party Marxist Leninist Faction (TKP/ML). On the following morning the murdered officers' colleagues, whose main responsibility is breaking up illegal demonstrations, staged an illegal demonstration of their own. Over 3,000 officers marched through the rain to the Istanbul governor's office, chanting, "An eye for an eye", "Do we have to die before we can use our weapons" and "We shall betray those who have betrayed us."
Most of the anger was directed at the new head of security for Istanbul, Kazim Abanoz. "I hate him," one of the protesters told the daily Radikal. "As soon as he took over he forbade us from using our nightsticks and beating anybody up."
But the marchers were also furious at the government's exclusion of police officers imprisoned for torture from planned amnesty and for attempting to offer concessions to several hundred left-wing inmates who are currently entering the ninth week of a hunger strike. The hunger strikers, who include members of groups affiliated with the TKP/ML, fear that plans to move them from dormitories to new "F-type prisons" with one- and three-person cells will both reduce their organisation's control over its members and make them more vulnerable to maltreatment by prison guards.
In Ankara, activists and relatives of inmates protest plans to transfer prisoners to cell-type prisons
(photo: AP)
Within hours of the riot police's protest in Istanbul, their colleagues in Ankara first beat up protesters demonstrating in support of the hunger strikers, then stood back and watched as a mob of Turkish ultra-nationalists attacked the protesters and smashed the windows of nearby left-wing political parties. On the following day, riot police throughout the country staged protests in support of their colleagues in Istanbul, manhandling their superiors as they tried to stop them.
"Nothing can excuse such behaviour, not even the murder of their colleagues," declared Interior Minister Sadettin Tantan. "The ringleaders will be punished."
Over half of the country's 13,500 riot policemen are believed to have taken part in the protests. The use of police from other branches of the force to investigate and punish their colleagues will only further lower morale in an already dangerously demoralised organisation.
The protests could not have come at a worse time for the Turkish authorities. Last Friday the government submitted for presidential ratification a law which would have reduced by 10 years all prison sentences for offences committed before May 1999. The government argues that it must reduce Turkey's growing prison population, which has now reached 72,000. But the proposed amnesty has triggered widespread public protests as it would mean freeing several thousand murderers and rapists, while leaving many non-violent offenders, including those sentenced under Turkey's draconian restrictions on freedom of speech, behind bars.
On Friday, President Ahmet Necdet Sezer vetoed the proposal on the grounds that it was both unfair and unconstitutional. But the government is afraid that, after promising so many inmates their freedom, the cancellation of the amnesty could trigger riots in the country's prisons. On Saturday, Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit announced that the government would present the bill to parliament again this week. Under Turkish law, the president cannot veto any measure which has twice been approved by parliament. But Sezer has already indicated that, even if he cannot veto the amnesty, he will forward it to the Constitutional Court for annulment.
The impasse comes at a time when the Turkish government is already bracing itself for the first of the hunger strikers to die. Last week, Justice Minister Sami Turk suspended the introduction of F-type prisons. But the hunger strikers promptly upped their demands, calling for a complete reform of the judicial system. In exasperation, Ecevit declared: "The government can no longer be held responsible if any of these hunger strikers dies."
But few, least of all the left-wing organisations, have any doubt that the deaths of the hunger strikers will raise tension, spark widespread public protests by sympathisers and, by creating martyrs, fuel an increase in recruits to the cause from among disillusioned Turkish youth.
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