Turkey's year of human rights violations

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (K24) - In its annual global review released Wednesday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Turkey's human rights record worsened in 2015, especially after the breakdown of Kurdish-Turkish peace talks.

“Turkey’s trajectory is toward authoritarianism and the dismantling of all checks on the power of its leaders,” said HRW’s senior Turkey researcher Emma Sinclair-Webb at a press conference in Istanbul.

Sinclair-Webb said “the combination of the breakdown of the Kurdish peace process and crackdown on media and political opponents over the past year spell dark times ahead and take Turkey further away from the goal of being a rights-respecting country.”

Sinclair-Webb was accompanied by HRW chief executive Kenneth Roth when the organization released a review of more than 90 countries' human rights records.

"There's an urgent need for the international community to speak out ... but unfortunately, Europe is so preoccupied with enlisting the Turkish government with the refugee flow, there's relatively little public attention on the crackdown on rights that is currently taking place here," Roth told Reuters.

The report noted that in September, during an eight-day-long curfew, 21 civilians were reported dead during a military operation in the town of Cizre. There was also a rise in credible reports of serious ill-treatment in detention.

HRW said it had concerns that Turkish authorities were unwilling to ensure effective investigations and criminal accountability for alleged security force abuses that occurred in Kurdish towns where numerous curfews have been imposed, including in Silvan, Nusaybin, and Diyarbakir’s Sur district.

The report highlighted a wave of investigations launched into hundreds of Kurdish political party officials and activists, including mayors. It said many were detained on charges of terrorism, including in cases where the evidence consisted of "non-violent political association and involvement in peaceful protests or press conferences."

The HRW also slammed Turkey's record on freedom of expression, association and assembly. It said the Government-led restrictions on media freedom and freedom of expression "went hand-in-hand with efforts to discredit the political opposition and prevent scrutiny of government policies."

The report added that in the first six months of 2015, almost three-quarters of all requests to Twitter worldwide for removal of tweets and blocking of accounts, came from Turkish authorities.

Ercan Dag contributed to this report in Istanbul