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Home » Sisters Letter  Letter from a Sister January 10, 2008 Dear Sir/Madam, I am writing with respect to my brother, Kemal Kutan who was arrested by the German police whilst travelling on a train to Stuttgart on 28 October 2007. Since then, due to an Interpol warrant demanded by the Turkish state, he has been in detention. According to our information the Turkish state has now made an official request for his extradition. As family we are greatly concerned about this and believe that if he is sent to Turkey his life will be in a great danger. It is due to these concerns that I am writing to you. I feel obliged to explain and describe the situation that our family, and Kemal himself, have faced in Turkey due to his political beliefs and ideas. We come from Dersim, a small town in the Kurdish region of Turkey. The majority of Dersim’s population is Alevi, a religious and cultural minority. Although Dersim is known as a Kurdish and Alevi City, it also used to have a large Armenian population among other minority groups. It is perhaps due to this history and geography that we can understand why there have been so many brutal massacres, processes of systematic and enforced assimilation, torture, arbitrary killings, disappearances, and high levels of poverty and marginalisation. The 1937 and 1939 Dersim Massacres, described as the bloodless massacres, were carried out by the new Turkish Republic in an attempt to eliminate those that were seen a threat to the nation building project that is based on one nation (Turkish) and one religion (Sunni Muslim). As an Alevi and Kurdish city Dersim was opposed to this project and the attempts to assimilate our diverse people into the one size fits all Turkish vision and many citizens entered into rebellion. Many people were killed, sent into exile and those that remained lived in extreme poverty. Many of my relatives including one of my uncles were killed during this period. This systematic oppression did not end in the 1940s but has carried on to the present day. In the 1980s during the military dictatorship, torture, repression and other forms of oppression intensified and many people were arrested, killed and faced unfair trials etc. It is within this context, of a people and a region denied their basic fundamental human rights, that one can makes sense of why my brother and many others have fought against this injustice and instead have chosen to fight for democracy and freedom in Turkey. My brother Kemal was born in 1965 and has been actively involved in politics as both an activist and journalist. A brief outline of his life story gives us an insight into the incredible amount of oppression faced by those who choose to think and struggle for a different type of Turkey. In 1979, when he was only 14 years of age, Kemal was arrested and without any reason remained in the police custody for several days. In 1982, at the age of 17 while he was studying in high school, he was arrested for his high school political activities. He remained in detention for almost 2 months and was subjected to systematic physical and psychological torture. Between 1984-1989 he was once again imprisoned and sent to some of the most brutal prisons in Turkey. During this period he suffered systematic torture, attacks, and punishment. Released in 1990, he launched a political journal called Halkin Demokrasisi, and worked as a journalist. In 1990, on the 1st of May ‘International Workers Day’ demonstration, while reporting for his newspaper, he witnessed the police shooting arbitrarily into the crowd which resulted in several people being wounded. On the same day he was arrested and imprisoned for almost a year for the crime of merely doing his job and reporting the events of that day. After his release he continued working for Halkin Demokrasisi. The social and political climate during the late 1980s, and until the late 1990’s, meant that like many other journalists and political activists he was subjected to continuous harassment by the police, including death threats and kidnap attempts. In an environment where political assassinations, threats and disappearances were widespread, Kemal Kutan decided to go into hiding in Turkey and has lived there clandestinely since then. Due to the intensification of threats both against himself and his family during the previous 2 years, in 2007 he felt the need to leave Turkey for Germany and seek political asylum. Under all these difficult conditions Kemal Kutan has never hid his personal ideas and political beliefs. He has worked very hard to try to create a different ‘Turkey’ where democracy, human rights and social justice exist. It is this political commitment and a continuous belief in his ideas that has made Kemal Kutan a threat to the Turkish state. Furthermore, the repression dealt out by the Turkish state has been extended to his relatives. Our close relatives and we as his family have also been subjected to degrading treatment, imprisonment, torture, threats and verbal insult. As a result of this many of us had to move to big cities or forced to leave Turkey for European countries. As a family we moved to Ankara where we undertook our education. My 3 Sisters and my other brother have all had to seek asylum due to oppression and threats targeted against them. My other brother and my sisters were forced to leave to protect themselves. Kemal’s young twin sons have even received threats to be taken away by the police. But it does not end there. Our father in 1982 was arrested and tortured for two months, which led to a grave deterioration in his health. He never recovered and died in 1984 at a very young age. Our elder brother Zeki due to his own political ideas and personal beliefs was arrested and remained in prison for many years. Due to the continuous oppression against him and his family Zeki sought asylum in Germany but sadly died in 1992 in a car accident. Our mother Hatice Kutan has perhaps been the most badly affected. She has been treated as a primary suspect and has received verbal threat to her life, her children and her son Kemal. The civil police has followed her on several occasions, received death threats by phone, and her house has been searched many times. Every time she goes to Dersim, without any reason given, she is stopped and searched. On several occasions she was told not to come to Dersim anymore. In November 1995 the police arrested her while she was travelling to Dersim and for a few days remained incommunicado. For no legal justification, she had to stay in prison for months. As if this was not enough, on every occasion that our family has visited our hometown of Dersim, we are told by local police and military that they will kill Kemal. On several occasions they have told my mother that her son’s ‘dead body will be delivered to her very soon’. One cannot imagine the pain that this can cause a mother. And these threats, go way beyond verbal abuse as in 2005 several of Kemal’s friends were brutally killed. Hopefully, this letter reveals just how much we as family and particularly my brother have suffered. If one could think how much our family members have suffered simply for our personal opinions and beliefs, it is not difficult to imagine what might happen to my brother Kemal if he was sent back to Turkey. I am in no doubt that Turkey will do its best to give diplomatic assurances to the German state in order to secure the extradition of my brother to Turkey. However, these diplomatic assurances cannot guarantee that his life will not be put in danger. Considering the latest situation in Turkey and the human rights conditions of the prisons it is possible that his life will be placed in grave danger. Currently, the political and social environment in Turkey is in turmoil. There is an increase in human rights violations against individual Kurds, human rights activists, writers, academics and journalists and also against oppositional institutions such as Kurdish parties, the Democratic Society Party, (DTP), Human Rights Organizations and newspapers. Some concrete examples of this was the attack on a Kurdish bookstore (Umut Kitabevi) in November, 2005, which killed two people and injured fourteen; the killing of Catholic Priest Andrea Santoro in Trabzon in February 2006, the attack on a Christian publishing house in April 2007, which resulted in three deaths and the brutal assassination of writer and Armenian intellectual Hirant Dink are only some examples of this. They are but three examples amongst many. Despite, some of the legal reforms and constitutional changes introduced via the European Union accession process human rights abuses such as systematic torture, arbitrary killing and unfair trails remain widespread. Many journalist and writers, as well as ordinary people have been taken to the court, jailed, arrested and in some cases killed, because of their political opinions and beliefs. Furthermore, as stated by the Human Rights Associations, the situation in the prisons across Turkey is getting worse with violent attacks, torture and isolation from other inmates representing some of the most common forms of ill treatment. Under these conditions if he is sent back to Turkey, his life will be in a great danger. In Turkey, as our whole family knows from experience, it is not difficult to construct someone as a terrorist and public enemy number one. Many people that have fought for democracy and freedom have been labelled as such. My brother is one such example. We know if he is sent back he will be treated as one and his life will be in a great danger. We have lost the last 20 years of our time with our brother; can we not now have the chance to be together once again? I believe that under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Kemal Kutan has the right to seek asylum and exercise his human rights in a free and democratic country, Turkey is not such a place and cannot offer those guarantees. This then surely obliges the German state to fulfil its international obligations and let Kemal Kutan remain here. Kemal is a wonderful, warm and deeply compassionate person born into a brutal place where his and his people’s rights have been systematically undermined. He is an asset not a threat to German society and deserves a chance to live in peace. I hope that you can give him that chance and allow him to remain. Kemal Kutan Sister on Behalf of Kutan family |
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