In Istanbul, prayers for a well known businessman, the owner of a popular newspaper. Rich, successful and only 38 years old the day before, he was assassinated, shot down in the middle of the city.
These days funerals have become a regular meeting place for Istanbul’s journalists and writers. Their conversation: of prisons, Mafia style assassinations, and government suppression.
Ayse Onal is one of Turkey’s best known journalists.
Ayse Onal: In the last few years around twenty journalists have been killed in Turkey, there have also been about six thousand unexplained deaths. We call it the unknown hand of death.
The specific killers may be unknown, but there’s plenty of talk about who’s behind them. Ayse Onal says Turkey is like Italy used to be before it cleaned up its Mafia.
Onal: Everyone in Turkey is afraid of the Mafia. Everyone is scared because the relations between the Mafia and politicians are so strong. Sometimes the Mafia attacks journalists for itself, sometimes for the government.
Every year Turkey remembers its World War One victories at Gallipoli. More than the battles or the few surviving veterans, it was Gallipoli that launched the career of Turkey’s most famous military hero. A few years after the war, Kemal Ataturk led a revolution.
Kemal Ataturk founded modern Turkey. The old Ottoman Empire had crumbled. The new country was united, by Ataturk and nationalism.
But these days that unity, built by Kemal Ataturk, is threatening to burst apart at the seams. Nearly a quarter of all Turks, around 15 million, are Kurdish in origin. Mostly, Turks and Kurds live peacefully side by side.
But for more than ten years in the east of the country, the government’s been waging a ruthless war against calls for a separate Kurdish state, calls led by an equally ruthless guerrilla group known as the Kurdish Workers’ Party, the PKK.
Onal: To me, the PKK is an armed group who behave without rules, they kill children, they sell drugs. But there are Kurds who we live with in Istanbul, in the east, everywhere, and who don’t accept the actions of the PKK. Those Kurds just want their democratic rights from the Turkish government.
V/O But in Turkey, even mentioning Kurds and ‘democracy’ can land you, if not dead, then in prison. Under what Turkey calls its laws against terrorism, talk about Kurdish rights is a crime.
Ayse Onal still writes articles, but for two weeks her newspaper has been too nervous to print them.
Onal: I don’t sympathise with the PKK. But I get angry because the government can’t understand the difference between the PKK and Kurdish society.
Turkey’s war against separatists is also increasingly a war against words. Among its victims, the country’s most famous writers. Yashar Kemal can claim three Nobel Prize and two charges of terrorism.
Now in his seventies, he faces five years in prison. His crime? Writing a magazine article that discussed Turkey’s problem with the Kurds.
Kemal: If they find against me, then you have to ask who’s really guilty? Am I the guilty one? Or the Turkish government?
Free speech charges against a Nobel Laureate can’t be ignored. Outside Turkey there’s criticism. Turkey’s government has promised to change its law. But the charges against writers are continuing.
Ahmet Altan: Fear of course.
Ahmet Altan is a leading novelist. Twenty years ago his father was jailed a communist. Now the son faces prison under the law against terror. His crime? Writing an article that imagined Turkish people swapping places with Kurds.
Altan: If you write in Turkey, if you think, if you have your own opinion, then you’ll have trouble, because our state wants everybody to think like the state.
Repressive, yet more open than some countries, Turkey’s a paradox. Journalists are being jailed, yet we and our camera were allowed, eventually, inside Istanbul’s military courts. Nearly every case here is a charge under the law used against freedom of speech, the notorious Article 8.
In one day there were dozens of cases, and dozens more waiting.
Older woman: My son is in court. He could be hanged. As a mother I can’t bear to put the washing on the line. I can’t bear to see a rope, I get sick and upset.
Young woman: For two years we’ve been coming to court every few months and nothing happens.
Man: Leave him or charge him. For two years there’s nothing but waiting.
Behind the court, the cells. One man turned to our camera. In this country, he said, they make you pay a price just for being alive.
Man: In this country they make you pay a price just for being alive.
Guard: He’s not allowed to talk.
It was all he was allowed, he was told to be silent.
Guard: Okay, enough. He’s banned from talking.
Chanting protesters: Don’t be silent! If you’re silent you’ll be next!
In Turkey the PKK is banned. So are its colours, red, yellow and green. This demonstration, led by unions, left wing groups and families of the disappeared, came about as close as is legal to PKK colours.
Mother: My son has been missing for nine months. Why haven’t the police come to tell me anything? If the government isn’t taking our children, then why isn’t it looking for them? What kind of government is this?
Osman Ozer says he isn’t a fighter, but he has been involved in a local association for human rights. Three months ago in the middle of the night, the police came to his home.
Ozer: After that they stripped me, even my underclothes, and they tied an ice block under me and one on top of me, like a sandwich. Then they started torturing me with high pressure water hoses. And they were swearing at me and beating me. And they also gave electric shocks to parts of my body.
Demonstrators: Murderers! Government!
Murderers, government. It’s a chant denied by Turkey’s politicians, but beginning to make the outside world nervous. Turkey’s almost been accepted into a Customs Union with Europe, but the evidence against its human rights record is mounting.
Ercan Kanar, Human Rights Lawyer: Right now there is no consistency in punishments. People get detained and sentenced depending on their thoughts, their beliefs and where they come from.
Ercan Kanar is a human rights lawyer - a dangerous trade in Turkey, where human rights are often the same thing as rights for Kurds. Recently, says Kanar, sixteen lawyers were arrested and tortured.
Kanar: In the 1994 in Istanbul alone we have documented 600 cases of torture. Of course the real number is something like ten times that. The six hundred are only the ones who’ve been able to get medical reports.
It’s another paradox that Turkey’s media talks openly of disappearances and murder. Human rights groups like Amnesty support the claims of killing and torture.
Turkey’s politicians say it’s natural for people to blame the government. The government in turn blames the PKK.
Yildirim Aktuna, P.M.’s Spokesperson: I believe that most of the time the police does nothing, there is no relation with this murder, but the PKK terrorists all the time accuse the government, accuse the police department, but they are not right, they don’t do it.
Forget human rights, and there’s another side to Turkey, one that’s very attractive to Europe. The bottom line: a giant market place, 60 million consumers and a growing middle class.
It’s a tempting prize, if you can solve a few problems. Europe wants Turkey, and Turkey wants Europe. Change the law against free speech says Europe, and there could be a deal.
Michael Lake, European Commission: If this happens, the European Parliament would take a much more positive view of the situation in Turkey, because the Parliament recognises that there are strong political and economic arguments for having Turkey in a Customs Union with us.
Aktuna: We have a problem with terrorism, that’s all. We have to finish it. After we have finished it we will not have any problem in Turkey.
PKK or no PKK, many feel Turkey’s real problem with terror goes deeper.
Altan: You know we have, yes, terror in the country and the state, the government has to put an end to it. Yes, I believe that. But the question is this: who or what creates the terror?
Bridging the Bosphorus has never been easy. Tension has often left Turkey divided. The fear now, that the battle to hold it together could in the long term be just as dangerous.
These days funerals have become a regular meeting place for Istanbul’s journalists and writers. Their conversation: of prisons, Mafia style assassinations, and government suppression.
Ayse Onal is one of Turkey’s best known journalists.
Ayse Onal: In the last few years around twenty journalists have been killed in Turkey, there have also been about six thousand unexplained deaths. We call it the unknown hand of death.
The specific killers may be unknown, but there’s plenty of talk about who’s behind them. Ayse Onal says Turkey is like Italy used to be before it cleaned up its Mafia.
Onal: Everyone in Turkey is afraid of the Mafia. Everyone is scared because the relations between the Mafia and politicians are so strong. Sometimes the Mafia attacks journalists for itself, sometimes for the government.
Every year Turkey remembers its World War One victories at Gallipoli. More than the battles or the few surviving veterans, it was Gallipoli that launched the career of Turkey’s most famous military hero. A few years after the war, Kemal Ataturk led a revolution.
Kemal Ataturk founded modern Turkey. The old Ottoman Empire had crumbled. The new country was united, by Ataturk and nationalism.
But these days that unity, built by Kemal Ataturk, is threatening to burst apart at the seams. Nearly a quarter of all Turks, around 15 million, are Kurdish in origin. Mostly, Turks and Kurds live peacefully side by side.
But for more than ten years in the east of the country, the government’s been waging a ruthless war against calls for a separate Kurdish state, calls led by an equally ruthless guerrilla group known as the Kurdish Workers’ Party, the PKK.
Onal: To me, the PKK is an armed group who behave without rules, they kill children, they sell drugs. But there are Kurds who we live with in Istanbul, in the east, everywhere, and who don’t accept the actions of the PKK. Those Kurds just want their democratic rights from the Turkish government.
V/O But in Turkey, even mentioning Kurds and ‘democracy’ can land you, if not dead, then in prison. Under what Turkey calls its laws against terrorism, talk about Kurdish rights is a crime.
Ayse Onal still writes articles, but for two weeks her newspaper has been too nervous to print them.
Onal: I don’t sympathise with the PKK. But I get angry because the government can’t understand the difference between the PKK and Kurdish society.
Turkey’s war against separatists is also increasingly a war against words. Among its victims, the country’s most famous writers. Yashar Kemal can claim three Nobel Prize and two charges of terrorism.
Now in his seventies, he faces five years in prison. His crime? Writing a magazine article that discussed Turkey’s problem with the Kurds.
Kemal: If they find against me, then you have to ask who’s really guilty? Am I the guilty one? Or the Turkish government?
Free speech charges against a Nobel Laureate can’t be ignored. Outside Turkey there’s criticism. Turkey’s government has promised to change its law. But the charges against writers are continuing.
Ahmet Altan: Fear of course.
Ahmet Altan is a leading novelist. Twenty years ago his father was jailed a communist. Now the son faces prison under the law against terror. His crime? Writing an article that imagined Turkish people swapping places with Kurds.
Altan: If you write in Turkey, if you think, if you have your own opinion, then you’ll have trouble, because our state wants everybody to think like the state.
Repressive, yet more open than some countries, Turkey’s a paradox. Journalists are being jailed, yet we and our camera were allowed, eventually, inside Istanbul’s military courts. Nearly every case here is a charge under the law used against freedom of speech, the notorious Article 8.
In one day there were dozens of cases, and dozens more waiting.
Older woman: My son is in court. He could be hanged. As a mother I can’t bear to put the washing on the line. I can’t bear to see a rope, I get sick and upset.
Young woman: For two years we’ve been coming to court every few months and nothing happens.
Man: Leave him or charge him. For two years there’s nothing but waiting.
Behind the court, the cells. One man turned to our camera. In this country, he said, they make you pay a price just for being alive.
Man: In this country they make you pay a price just for being alive.
Guard: He’s not allowed to talk.
It was all he was allowed, he was told to be silent.
Guard: Okay, enough. He’s banned from talking.
Chanting protesters: Don’t be silent! If you’re silent you’ll be next!
In Turkey the PKK is banned. So are its colours, red, yellow and green. This demonstration, led by unions, left wing groups and families of the disappeared, came about as close as is legal to PKK colours.
Mother: My son has been missing for nine months. Why haven’t the police come to tell me anything? If the government isn’t taking our children, then why isn’t it looking for them? What kind of government is this?
Osman Ozer says he isn’t a fighter, but he has been involved in a local association for human rights. Three months ago in the middle of the night, the police came to his home.
Ozer: After that they stripped me, even my underclothes, and they tied an ice block under me and one on top of me, like a sandwich. Then they started torturing me with high pressure water hoses. And they were swearing at me and beating me. And they also gave electric shocks to parts of my body.
Demonstrators: Murderers! Government!
Murderers, government. It’s a chant denied by Turkey’s politicians, but beginning to make the outside world nervous. Turkey’s almost been accepted into a Customs Union with Europe, but the evidence against its human rights record is mounting.
Ercan Kanar, Human Rights Lawyer: Right now there is no consistency in punishments. People get detained and sentenced depending on their thoughts, their beliefs and where they come from.
Ercan Kanar is a human rights lawyer - a dangerous trade in Turkey, where human rights are often the same thing as rights for Kurds. Recently, says Kanar, sixteen lawyers were arrested and tortured.
Kanar: In the 1994 in Istanbul alone we have documented 600 cases of torture. Of course the real number is something like ten times that. The six hundred are only the ones who’ve been able to get medical reports.
It’s another paradox that Turkey’s media talks openly of disappearances and murder. Human rights groups like Amnesty support the claims of killing and torture.
Turkey’s politicians say it’s natural for people to blame the government. The government in turn blames the PKK.
Yildirim Aktuna, P.M.’s Spokesperson: I believe that most of the time the police does nothing, there is no relation with this murder, but the PKK terrorists all the time accuse the government, accuse the police department, but they are not right, they don’t do it.
Forget human rights, and there’s another side to Turkey, one that’s very attractive to Europe. The bottom line: a giant market place, 60 million consumers and a growing middle class.
It’s a tempting prize, if you can solve a few problems. Europe wants Turkey, and Turkey wants Europe. Change the law against free speech says Europe, and there could be a deal.
Michael Lake, European Commission: If this happens, the European Parliament would take a much more positive view of the situation in Turkey, because the Parliament recognises that there are strong political and economic arguments for having Turkey in a Customs Union with us.
Aktuna: We have a problem with terrorism, that’s all. We have to finish it. After we have finished it we will not have any problem in Turkey.
PKK or no PKK, many feel Turkey’s real problem with terror goes deeper.
Altan: You know we have, yes, terror in the country and the state, the government has to put an end to it. Yes, I believe that. But the question is this: who or what creates the terror?
Bridging the Bosphorus has never been easy. Tension has often left Turkey divided. The fear now, that the battle to hold it together could in the long term be just as dangerous.