Turkey's Choice: European Union or the Death Penalty

May 30, 2001

By DOUGLAS FRANTZ

ISTANBUL, May 29 � On some days, after he was beaten and raw sewage was pumped into his darkened cell in a former morgue, Celalettin Can would cower on the putrid floor and pray for the hangman to call his name.

"Death is not the most difficult thing," said Mr. Can, who said he had been repeatedly tortured while awaiting execution for membership in a left-wing terrorist group. "Within the psychology of being tortured, death becomes a secondary fear. Sometimes you pray for death. Staying alive is the hardest thing."

Mr. Can, 45, escaped the gallows when his sentence was reduced for procedural reasons. Two years ago, after 19 years on death row, he was released into a twilight existence in which he has no legal rights and can be returned to prison for the most minor offense.

The death penalty remains on the books in Turkey, though no one has been executed since 1984 as successive governments observe a self-imposed moratorium. But the debate over whether to abolish it is intensifying, and the outcome will play a decisive role in determining whether Turkey joins the European Union.

Most European countries have abolished the death penalty, and the European Union requires members to ban it.

In the United States, one of 87 countries still using it for common crimes, the debate is framed by moral arguments about inequalities and injustices in application.

In Turkey the roots of the dispute are political: the politics of the prisoners themselves, of Turkey's European Union candidacy, of right-wing nationalists who say they want a unified country and of progressives who say they want a democratic one.

A parliamentary commission began debate last week on 51 proposed constitutional amendments needed for Turkey to join the European Union. They cover volatile matters like reducing the military's political role and granting cultural rights to the Kurdish ethnic minority.

Though it is less sweeping in terms of remaking Turkey, the death penalty could turn out to be the sticking point. As a price for the coveted European Union membership, the governing coalition agreed grudgingly to abolish the death penalty. But no date was set, and the political will to do so has been questioned.

The opposition of the coalition's right-wing partner, the Nationalist Action Party, could block the reform package. The party's leaders openly object to ending the death penalty for crimes against the state, a category that embraces a wide spectrum of political activity.

Roughly half of the 47 people now on death row were convicted of political crimes, according to human rights advocates. A handful were members of right-wing groups, but most either supported the rebels who seek a separate state for Turkey's roughly 12 million Kurds or were part of left-wing organizations that advocate overthrowing the state or are viewed with great suspicion by the political and military elite.

"We consider there are some risks in abolishing the death penalty for crimes committed against the state and nation," Sevket Bulent Yahnici, deputy chairman of the Nationalist Action Party, said in an interview. "Within the party we have concerns about abolishing the death penalty completely."

Party leaders argue that ending the death penalty would allow Abdullah Ocalan, the Kurdish rebel leader sentenced to death for treason in 1999, to go unpunished, eliminating a deterrent to other separatist groups.

Opposition also comes from within the military and the police, which have both suffered heavy casualties from clashes with Kurdish rebels and left-wing extremists.

"We do not accept any good will for those who want to divide this country and pull down our flag," said Mehmet Guner, director of an organization for families of soldiers and police officers killed in the line of duty. "Ending capital punishment should not be a precondition to enter the European Union. If they like us, they better accept us the way we are."

But rights advocates and international organizations see the opportunity to end the death penalty as an important step in cleaning up broader problems in a country where torture remains prevalent and the justice system is regarded as often arbitrary and politically tainted.

Abolishing the death penalty is also supported by the leading business organization, the Turkish Industrialists' and Businessmen's Association. The group issued a 10-point blueprint for reform last week that included canceling capital punishment except in times of war.

Capital cases are heard by panels of three judges, and defendants can be convicted and sentenced to death by majority vote. Convictions are reviewed by the Supreme Court and must be ratified by Parliament before an execution is carried out. Parliament has not acted on a case since 1984, when two political prisoners were executed.

Political trials occur in state security courts where acquittals are rare. Eren Keskin, director of the Istanbul chapter of the national Human Rights Association, said she has not seen an acquittal in a political case in 17 years as a defense lawyer.

"Even when the testimony comes from torture, with medical reports proving the torture, no one is acquitted," she said in an interview.

Criticism of the death penalty comes from less predictable quarters, too. Nejat Oztaskent, a retired army colonel who served as a military prosecutor and a senior judge for 45 years, said too many defendants were sentenced to death for political beliefs, without sufficient evidence or reliable witnesses.

"It is true murder to give capital punishment for political reasons," Mr. Oztaskent said in an interview. "How can you condemn someone to death on transitory political terms that you create?"

Turkey has had some notable executions. Adnan Menderes, a former prime minister, was hanged in 1961 after a military coup. And Mr. Ocalan's death sentence has drawn sharp warnings from European human rights courts and organizations that he must not be executed.

The government recognizes the danger swirling around Mr. Ocalan's sentence and seems unlikely to execute him or anyone else so long as its European Union membership hangs in the balance.

Still, Turkey's human rights record is unflattering, and critics contend that executions are carried out regularly, not at the prison gallows but through extrajudicial killings by the police and paramilitary groups of people who have not been arrested or convicted.

"Abolishing the death penalty would not solve the problem," Bakir Caglar, a law professor at Istanbul University who defended the government in the European Court of Human Rights for seven years before resigning, said in an interview.

Turkey has proven deaf to criticism of its rights record in the past, but the prospect of closer economic, military and cultural ties with Europe may prove enough to persuade the politicians to enact many changes, including erasing the death penalty from the books.

Until then, the march goes on, even if the official executions do not. Earlier this month, an appeals court upheld the death sentences of 31 Islamic extremists convicted of inciting a crowd to set a fire that killed 37 intellectuals attending a conference in the Turkish town of Sivas in 1993.