Amnesty Int. Secretary-General Khan to visit Turkey

The Amnesty International (AI) delegation will arrive in Istanbul on Feb. 8, and meet Turkish NGOs and victims of human right abuses to obtain further details about current human rights violations in Turkey. The delegation will be in Ankara on Tuesday and be received by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul. It is expected that Irene Khan will hold a press conference after she meets the prime minister on Feb. 12. After the visits in Ankara, the delegation will go to Diyarbakir on Feb. 13 to meet with local NGOs and groups supporting more rights for women.

According to AI, although encouraging the legal reforms introduced by the current government aimed at bringing Turkish law into line with European human rights standards with the aim of meeting the criteria for accession to the European Union, many prisoners of conscience continued to face trial or imprisonment, particularly for expressing opinions on the Kurdish question or the high-security "F-type" prisons, or for expressing Islamist views. Moreover, some of the legal changes made are ambiguous and insufficient in tackling the human rights abuses they were supposed to address. Furthermore, the changes were often not implemented in practice. Torture in police custody remained widespread and is practiced systematically in the Anti-Terror branches of police stations; and the perpetrators are rarely brought to justice.

The AI delegation will be headed by Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International in Germany Barbara Lochbihler, Amnesty International in Turkey Chairman Ozlem Dalkiran and members of the International Secretariat in London Nicola Duckworth, Program Director of Europe and Central Asia Emma Sinclair Webb, James Logan, Christina Curry: Turkish Research Team and External Relations Adviser Judit Arenas.