Conscientious Objection in Turkey: Struggling to Emerge

Each year, for Prisoners for Peace day (December 1), War Resisters International (WRI) focuses on the struggles of conscientious objectors and other jailed peace activists in a particular country of concern. This year, WRI focused on Turkey.

Militarism as State Doctrine

Militarism coupled with laicism (separation of church and state, of which the military is the self-appointed guardian) are the founding principles of the Turkish Republic. Modern Turkey was formed by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk on 23 October 1923. After the first census, in 1927, the new Turkish Republic introduced universal conscription, boosting military strength from around 78,000 in 1922 to 800,000 in 1939/40. The Turkish state promoted the myth that "every (male) Turk is born a soldier" - a concept now deeply ingrained in Turkish life.

The Turkish military plays an imposing role in Turkey's public and political life. Since the beginning of the Turkish Republic, the military has taken power three times (1960, 1971, 1980), and staged "silent coups" several times, forcing its will on the civilian political elite.

The Kurdish issue

Kemalist Turkish nationalism is at odds with the multi-ethnic reality in Turkey. Since 1980, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has waged a guerrilla war against the Turkish state, first with the aim of Kurdish independence, and now aimed at autonomy within a Turkish state. The Turkish military responded with all-out war in the Kurdish provinces, a state of emergency, and a policy of ethnic cleansing.

Recent attacks by the PKK within Turkish territory, and the capture of Turkish soldiers by PKK guerrillas, who operate out of Kurdish northern Iraq, sparked tensions between Turkey and Iraq, and subsequently between Turkey and its NATO allies, especially the USA and Britain.

While this issue was going to press, Turkey had amassed 100,000 troops on the Iraq border, ready to invade to "root out terrorism."

Conscientious Objection

"Patriotic service is a right and duty for every Turkish citizen," states article 72 of the Turkish constitution. Military service is thus a seemingly inevitable part of a Turkish man's life.

The thought that a man who is not physically unfit would not serve in the country's military is almost unthinkable for many. Only recently has the "every Turk is born a soldier" myth, carefully crafted since the early days of the new Turkish republic, begun to show cracks.

In December 1989, Tayfun Gönül was the first person to publicly declare his conscientious objection, soon to be followed by Vedat Zencir in February 1990. Both cases received quite a lot of public attention, and in December 1992 the first Turkish War Resisters Association was set up in Izmir, the beginning of what may be called a conscientious objection movement.

In the following years, several young men declared their conscientious objection, and in 1993 the International Conscientious Objection Meeting (ICOM) in Ören in Turkey injected a lot of enthusiasm and energy into the young movement.

Initially, the movement faced prosecution under Article 155 (see below), but no conscientious objector went to prison for his objection. This changed with the arrest of Osman Murat Ülke on October 7, 1996.

The Case of Osman Murat Ülke

Osman Murat Ülke declared his conscientious objection and burned his call-up papers on September 1, 1995 in Izmir. He was arrested more than a year later on charges of violating Article 155, "alienating the people from the military." Once in the hands of the military, he was transferred to a military unit, where he refused to obey any orders, and was repeatedly charged with "disobedience," leading to what the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) later called a "constant alternation between prosecution and terms of imprisonment." He was released two and a half years later, but is still officially obliged to perform military service, thus rendering him vulnerable for the rest of his life to an endless repetition of the same ordeal.

On January 24, 2006, the ECHR ruled that his treatment amounted to "civil death" and a violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (which forbids "inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment"). The ECHR sentenced Turkey to pay compensation. However, while Osman received the financial compensation, his legal situation did not change. In June of 2007, a new arrest warrant was issued for the remainder of a sentence dating back to 1999. Turkey is thus defying the European Court of Human Rights. When Ülke's lawyer appealed against the arrest warrant to the Eskisehir military court, the court ruled in favor of the military, arguing that since the ECHR did not order a retrial, the earlier sentences are still enforceable.

The Council of Europe emphasized in a meeting in October 2007 that ECHR judgments "have direct applicability in Turkish legal order by virtue of Article 90 of the Turkish Constitution," and urged Turkey to finally put an end to the violation of Osman's rights. The case still continues.

Several other conscientious objectors have spent time in prison in the past several years - including Halil Savda, Mehmet Bal, Mehmet Tarhan - only to be released after several months into a life amounting to a similar "civil death."

Since 1989, more than 60 people have publicly declared their conscientious objection, demanding a right that Turkey does not yet recognize.

Initially, the ECHR judgement in the case of Osman Murat Ülke raised hope that soon the situation could be resolved. However, recent developments are less positive - especially the obstructive behavior of the Turkish state when it comes to the implementation of the ECHR judgement in the Ülke's case.

But Ülke's case is not the only negative indicator: in the case of a Jehovah's Witness objector, a Military Court in Ankara ruled on May 29, 2007 that repeated punishment for "persistent disobedience" is lawful - again in complete defiance of the judgment of the ECHR.

However, in its communication with the Council of Europe on the implementation of the ECHR judgement, the Turkish government said that a law is under preparation that will put an end to the violation of human rights that Ülke and other conscientious objectors face. It might take more ECHR judgments to convince Turkey that conscientious objection is a human right.

Article 318: Silencing dissent

Article 318 of the Turkish Penal Code:

"(1) Persons who give incentives or make suggestions or spread propaganda which will have the effect of discouraging people from performing military service shall be sentenced to imprisonment for a term of six months to two years.

(2) If the act is committed through the medium of the press and media, the penalty shall be increased by half."

Most of the initial prosecutions of Turkish antimilitarists were under what was then called Article 155 of the Turkish Penal Code, titled "alienating the people from the military" (now renumbered 318).

An important early case was that of Erhan Akyildiz and Ali Tevfik Berber in 1993. They were arrested on order of the Chief of Staff and were tried because they interviewed CO Aytek Özel, chair of the Izmir War Resisters Association (since banned), for the TV channel HBB on December 8, 1993.

Their prosecution was the first time civilians were tried in a military court. Erhan Akyildiz and Ali Tevfik Berber received the minimum sentence of two months imprisonment, and Aytek Özel was sentenced to one year and 15 days.

More recently, there have been several cases of prosecution under Article 318.

Recent cases include:

• Doghan Özkan, an activist working for conscientious objection with the Istanbul branch of the Human Rights Association, gave a public address to the press on December 12, 2004, and was subsequently sentenced to five months imprisonment on September 20, 2006. The sentence was commuted to a fine of 3000 YTL. An appeal is still pending.
• Perihan Magden was charged with violation of Article 318 for an article titled "Conscientious Objection is a Human Right," published in 2005. She was acquitted on July 27, 2006, because the court upheld the right to freedom of speech and expression.
• Halil Savda not only faces charges for his conscientious objection, but was also charged under Article 318, because he read out a solidarity statement for Israeli conscientious objectors in front of the Israeli consulate in Istanbul.
• Birgul Ozbaris, a journalist for the newspaper Ozgur Gundem, was charged with seven separate accounts of violating Article 318. In total, she is facing up to 21 years of imprisonment.

Any criticism of the Turkish military can lead to prosecution under Article 318. Thus, an open debate about the role of the military in Turkey is still almost impossible.

In June of 2007, Article 318 was brought within the scope of the Turkish Anti-Terror-Code, labeling conscientious objection an "organized crime," effectively increasing the maximum prison term to four and a half years.

Turkish antimilitarists have started a campaign to demand that Article 318 be abolished, and all pending trials immediately dismissed.

To Get Involved

• War Resisters International
  5 Caledonian Rd, London N1 9DX, Britain,
  +44-20-7278 4040, www.wri-irg.org
• Istanbul Anti-militarist Inisiyatif
  +90 536 8959290;
  uygarabaci@hotmail.com; www.savaskarsitlari.org