An Israeli military court on Wednesday convicted a Palestinian rights activist of offenses in the occupied West Bank, his lawyer said, in a case that Amnesty International described as politically motivated.

The military did not immediately provide Reuters with the Ofer military court’s verdict against Issa Amro of the Palestinian city of Hebron, and arguments over sentencing will await a further hearing on Feb. 8.

Amro denied the charges, which included protesting without a permit, obstructing Israeli soldiers’ activities in the flashpoint city of Hebron, and assaulting a Jewish settler.

Amro, 40, founded an activist group that regularly protests against settlement construction in Hebron. Under heavy Israeli military protection, around 1,000 settlers live there among 200,000 Palestinians.

“It doesn’t make sense to punish someone for non-violent resistance,” Amro told Reuters. “The Israeli military system exists only to oppress Palestinians and restrict freedom of speech.”

Amro was convicted on six of 18 charges against him, in incidents that occurred between 2010 and 2016, his lawyer, Gaby Lasky, said.

Lasky said it was hard to predict whether Amro would face prison time, but that a Palestinian in a similar case received a 10-month term.

Amnesty International said the charges against Amro were “politically motivated and linked to his peaceful work in exposing Israel’s human rights violations”.

The group has also condemned as “disgraceful” charges brought against Amro by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

Amnesty said the PA has accused him of “disturbing public order” and “insulting higher authorities” over Facebook posts in 2017 critical of Palestinian leaders.

Amro said his next Palestinian court hearing is on Jan. 20.

Most countries view settlements Israel built on West Bank land captured in a 1967 war as illegal. Israel disputes this, citing biblical and historical connections to the territory, as well as security needs.

Reuters

Rare consensus as Turkish parliament slams Trump’s “peace plan”

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Thousands of Turkish lawyers protested outside Istanbul’s main courthouse on Tuesday against a government plan to reform bar associations, saying it aims to silence dissent and will lead to the politicization of their profession.

Under a draft law presented to parliament on Tuesday by President Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling AK Party, multiple bar associations could be formed in each of Turkey’s provinces. Only one is currently allowed per province.

AK Party lawmaker Cahit Ozkan told reporters the bill was needed because bar associations were no longer able to function properly following a 13-fold increase in the number of lawyers in Turkey since the existing law first came into effect.

New lawyers would now be allowed to register with any bar in the province, according to the draft law.

The protesters say it is an attempt to dilute the existing bar associations, which have emerged as leading critics of the Erdogan government’s record on the rule of law and human rights.

The associations say the judicial system has descended into chaos with lawyers jailed, defenses muzzled and confidence in judges and prosecutors destroyed.

“Lawyers being registered with different bars will lead to division. Lawyers will be classified according to their bars… We think there are serious dangers,” said one lawyer at the protest who declined to give her name.

Mehmet Durakoglu, head of the Istanbul Bar Association, said his association would continue to fight against the bill, even though it is likely to become law given the majority that the AK Party and its nationalist MHP allies have in parliament.

“We will use our democratic rights to the end so that (the bill) does not pass,” he told the protesters.

Reuters

Turkish police block lawyers marching to Ankara against bill

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A suggestion by Turkey’s leading Muslim cleric that homosexuality causes illness has prompted a clash between President Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Islamist-rooted AK Party and the country’s lawyer association over freedom of expression.

The lawyers condemned the cleric’s comment as harmful to human dignity, but an AKP spokesman said he had simply been speaking up for the values of the Turkish people and accused the lawyers of harboring a “fascist mentality.”

On Friday, Ali Erbas, head of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs, said Islam condemns homosexuality because “it brings illnesses and corrupts generations”, adding that it also causes the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that leads to AIDS.

Homosexuality does not cause HIV but gay men who do not practice safe sex have been among the groups most vulnerable to the virus.

“Come and let’s fight together to protect people from such evil,” Erbas said in his weekly sermon.

Unlike in many other Muslim-majority countries, homosexuality is not a crime in Turkey. But homosexuals face widespread hostility and gay pride parades, which used to attract thousands of people from around the Middle East, have been banned in Istanbul in recent years.

The Ankara Bar Association said Erbas’s comments “came from ages ago” and were against human dignity. The Izmir Bar Association said it was concerned the statement could encourage new hate crimes.

On Monday, government officials took to Twitter to defend Erbas using the top-trending hashtag “Ali Erbas is not alone”.

“It is the most natural right for people to speak according to the value system they believe in,” said AKP spokesman Omer Celik on Twitter.

“What is abnormal is demanding the contrary,” Celik added, accusing the Ankara Bar Association of displaying a “fascist mentality” that sought to deprive Erbas of his right to free speech.

Presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin, using the same hashtag, said Erbas had voiced the “divine judgment”.

On Monday, the Ankara prosecutor’s office launched an investigation into the heads of the Ankara Bar Association on suspicion that they may have insulted Turks’ religious values, the state Anadolu news agency reported.

Human rights groups and the European Union have long accused Erdogan and his government of neglecting, and in some cases of rolling back, the rights of religious and ethnic minorities, homosexuals, and women.

Reuters

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A Turkish public prosecutor wants a Turkish lawyer who worked for the German Embassy in Ankara to be jailed for 20,973 years over charges of espionage, T24 news portal reported on Thursday.

Yilmaz S. was arrested on September 17 last year while he was dealing with the cases of Turkish citizens seeking asylum in Germany on behalf of the embassy in Ankara.

As part of the embassy work, the lawyer was trying to get information from the Turkish prosecutors and police about asylum seekers.

In his indictment submitted to the Ankara 13th Heavy Penal Court, the Prosecutor Mehmet Ilhan Komurcugil accused the lawyer of espionage, illegal acquisition of private personal data and violation of the confidentiality of the investigation.

Four more suspects, two lawyers, a debt enforcement officer and a court clerk have also been tried in the same case.

One of the lawyers is reportedly the attorney of Fethullah Gulen, a US-based Muslim preacher who has been accused by Ankara of masterminding the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey.

Previously the court remanded the indictment to the prosecutor on the grounds that there must be official permission from the Turkish ministry of justice for the investigation.

It said this was because the alleged offenses were related to the legal profession, according to Turkish law.

“I appreciate the court’s [previous] remand order in such a time [in Turkey] where lawlessness has become common practice,” Yilmaz S’s lawyer Levent Kanat told Deutsche Welle (DW) Turkish last week.

Yilmaz S.’s arrest sparked outrage in many circles, as well as Germany, at the time.

The German authorities believe that more than 250 other files including pending asylum claims of Kurdish activists and Gulen movement members are now in the hands of the Turkish intelligence service (MIT).

The authorities seized them in a police search of the lawyer’s offices during the detention.

Following the detention and capture of the documents, Germany’s Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) had reportedly warned some 200 asylum-seekers that the data could lead to probes by Turkey’s MIT.

Germany, hosting the biggest number of asylum seekers in Europe saw some 9,500 protection applications from Turkey between January and October last year, 8% higher than the number for the same period in 2018, according to official statements.

The increase is a result of Turkey’s crackdown on dissidents including the Kurds and  Gulen followers since the failed coup.

Since the coup bid, the Erdogan government has carried out a mass crackdown with more than 500,000 people being detained and hundreds of thousands of public workers being fired or suspended.

Kurdish politician’s asylum papers seized after arrest of German embassy lawyer

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The Human Rights Watch (HRW) expressed its concerns on Tuesday that the Turkish government may be concealing information about the enforced disappearance of six people in February, four of which were recently confirmed to be in police custody in Ankara.

Four of the six men, who were abducted on various dates in February, Ozgur Kaya, Erkan Irmak, Yasin Ugan and Salim Zeybek, have been in custody of Ankara’s counterterrorism police since July 28.

The other two abductees, Gokhan Turkmen and Mustafa Yilmaz, who went missing in the capital around the same time, have not yet been found.

Turkish authorities suspect that the six men have links to the faith-based movement of the US-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen, which is regarded by the Turkish government as a terrorist organization responsible for the July 15, 2016 coup attempt.

However, coup-related allegations and involvement in terror activity are strongly denied by Gulen and his followers.

Since the coup attempt, Turkey’s ruling AK Party (AKP) government has carried out an unprecedented crackdown on the movement and its followers, detaining and arresting nearly 80,000 people and prosecuting more than 511,000.

Although it has been acknowledged by the authorities that they are holding the four men, they have not yet revealed where the detainees have been for the last five months, implying that they were not in the custody of the state nor their proxies.

The Ankara Bar Association stated last week that the men have been denied access to lawyers since they were found by the police.

The Turkish authority’s decision not to allow the men access to their lawyers has raised HRW’s suspicion that the men may be under pressure to conceal information about the circumstances around their disappearance.

“Lawyers have been prevented from meeting the men, in violation of Turkey’s laws, which fuels our suspicion that the authorities want to hide the truth about what these four have lived through for the past five-and-a-half months,” Tom Porteous, deputy program director at HRW said.

He added: “There needs to be a full account of what has happened to these men since February, and everyone implicated in their presumed enforced disappearances should be held to account.”

Noting that Turkey has “a heinous history of forcible disappearances of people in the 1990s, as attested in multiple ECHR judgments,” Porteous urged Turkish authorities to immediately investigate whether Yilmaz and Turkmen are also being held in undisclosed detention sites.

The family members of the detainees, who have been allowed to see them briefly twice in the presence of police officers, told Turkish media that they were reluctant to provide answers to questions about their whereabouts since February.

They also stated that the police officers who were present during the visit intervened to stop further questions regarding the issue.

HRW said that the Turkish authorities are legally obliged to grant the families’ chosen lawyers access to the men and permit independent medical professionals to conduct full medical examinations of them.

Citing the men’s wives, who have been campaigning and filing complaints to find information on their husbands’ whereabouts for months, HRW said that they were very pale, had lost a lot of weight, and were unwilling to answer any questions about their disappearance.

The wives further told HRW that each of the men said, with police officers present, that they did not want to see a lawyer and that the wives should stop campaigning or lodging complaints about their cases.

Police presence during the meetings and the men’s introverted manner of speaking, as well as their inability or fear to provide any information about the past five months, adds to the concern that they are being pressured to withhold information about their treatment, HRW argued.

Although families made great efforts to ensure a proper investigation into the forced disappearances in each case, the prosecutors in charge of the cases dismissed their complaints and have failed to carry out effective research.

The families have also applied to Turkey’s Constitutional court (AYM), the rulings of which are binding for all subordinate courts across the country, the United Nations (UN) Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, and to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Even though the cases of the six presumed to be forcibly disappeared men were raised many times in the Turkish parliament, and numerous human rights associations have publicly reported on them, the authorities have made no official statement about the men or their whereabouts since February.

A non-profit investigative newsroom based in Europe, Correctiv, alleged in a report in December 2018 that the abductees were held by Turkey’s intelligence service (MIT) in a secret detention facility in Ankara, called “the Ranch,” where state agents torture and interrogate them.

No access to lawyers for four abducted and in police custody: Bar Association 

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Mehmet Yoylu, a Turkish judge, has been suspended by Turkey’s Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSK) after he reprimanded a female lawyer, Tugce Cetin, for wearing “inappropriate workplace attire”, Hurriyet daily reported on Wednesday.

During a court hearing in Istanbul earlier this week, Yoylu wanted a photograph taken of Cetin’s skirt to send to the Istanbul Bar Association as he believed the skirt was too short and, therefore, violated the court’s dress code.

The HSK launched an investigation into the incident after a group of attorneys filed a complaint with the council.

“Yoylu has been suspended pending investigation,” the HSK said on Wednesday.

Commenting on the dismissal of Yoylu, Turkey’s Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul stated on Wednesday that it was “unacceptable” for someone in Yoylu’s position to be more interested in the attire of a lawyer than the actual legal hearing.

“Our judicial system cannot allow for anyone to be discriminated against based on attire or lifestyle or be exposed to arbitrary treatment when delivering justice or searching for justice,” Gul said in a tweet.

The Union of Turkish Bar Associations (TBB) gave a statement saying that they will not accept such behavior and that they will pursue the unlawful harassment of a judge targeting a female lawyer.

Cetin posted a photo of her with her fiancée, also a lawyer, in front of an Istanbul court on Thursday, wearing the same skirt that Yoylu claimed to have violated the dress code.

“We are where we always are, wearing the same clothes,” she tweeted.

Guards sexually harass female visitors in Turkey’s prisons, Opposition MP cries out

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Former Turkish diplomats arrested over terrorism charges claim they have been tortured as well as sexually abused with police batons, Ankara Bar Association reported.

The torture allegations first emerged on Monday when Omer Faruk Gergerlioglu, a lawmaker from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) raised the issue through his Twitter account, calling for the Interior Ministry to explain the incident.

This was followed on Tuesday by the Ankara Lawyer’s Bar Association, which following a series of meetings with the victims, published a report substantiating the allegations.

Gergerlioglu, who is also a human rights activist, said via Twitter: “It has been claimed there are acts of severe torture, including inserting a truncheon into someone’s anus, on former foreign ministry staff who are currently detained at financial crimes unit of the Ankara Police Department. It is reported there are about 100 people tortured.”

Gergerlioglu also submitted a written parliamentary inquiry to Vice President Fuat Oktay on the alleged torture targeting the ex-diplomats.

The bar association created a team of lawyers on Monday in a bid to look into the incident and published the detailed report on Tuesday, following interviews with five detainees who were allegedly subjected to torture.

Diplomat hospitalized

According to the report, the ex-diplomats were endured torture such as sexual harassment with batons, threats of rape, reverse handcuffing, harsh beatings, being knocked unconscious, and being forced to completely undress.

A tortured diplomat was hospitalized due to a severe beating.

 Doctors refused to give a medical report, as it was performed, contrary to law, under police surveillance, the report said.

The detainees reportedly said that they were tortured in a dark room at the Ankara Financial Crimes Police Department.

One detainee reported an officer as saying that they (torture team) were from a professional (special) unit, coming from outside (other than police).

Cevheri Guven, an exiled Turkish journalist and former editor-in-chief of Nokta news magazine, posted a tweet late Tuesday, claiming that the torture team possibly came from Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT), based on his findings from the association’s report.

In the post-coup term, the MIT has been accused of abducting dissident people, and of torturing them in specially equipped secret torture cells by special teams.

The MIT has set up secret torture sites to interrogate people with links to the Gulen Movement, according to a report by Correctiv, a non-profit investigative newsroom based in Europe.

In its report, the bar association announced the torture has been going on and urged for an investigation over the incident.

In response, the Ankara Police Department released a statement on Tuesday, denying the torture allegations.

On May 20, Turkish prosecutors issued arrest warrants for 249 foreign ministry staff, with 78 of them being detained during police raids.

The indictment was reportedly related to an exam-cheating offense, a crime that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government blames Gulen Movement for it.

AKP also accuses the movement of orchestrating a failed coup attempt in July 2016.

Torture in Turkey the  norm rather than exception

 John Dalhuisen, Europe Director for Amnesty International, said that reports of abuse including beatings and rape in detention in Turkey are extremely alarming.

“Mass Torture and Ill-Treatment in Turkey” report published in June 2017 by the Sweden-based Stockholm Center for Freedom (SCF) declared that the torture, abuse, and ill-treatment of detainees and prisoners in Turkey have become the norm rather than the exception.

People are at risk of torture in police custody, especially if they are accused of terrorism or of being linked to the 2016 attempted coup, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), an independent human rights organization which investigates and reports on abuses happening all around the world.

Lawyers confirm severe torture in Halfeti district

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Several Kurdish deputies, as well as thousands of Kurdish prisoners in Turkey, have ended their hunger strike, in wake of a call from Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Reuters reported on Sunday.

Both the lawmakers and the inmates made statements on Sunday and indicated that they had ended the hunger strike in line with a call from Ocalan.

They had gone on hunger strike to demand that the isolation imposed by the Turkish government on jailed Ocalan be lifted so that he can see his family and lawyers regularly.

The MP’s statement came 200 days after the protest action was launched, following the call of the jailed PKK leader, which was read out by one of his lawyers at a news conference in Istanbul on Sunday morning.

Ocalan said: “Comrades who have committed themselves to hunger strikes and death fasts, I expect you to end your protest.”

The imprisoned leader made the call after Ankara let him meet his lawyers on May 22, for the second time this month, explaining that their hunger strikes and death fasts had served its purpose.

It was only the second time he had seen his lawyers since 2011.

Ended after 85 days

Dersim Dag, Tayip Temel, and Murat Sarisac, MP’s from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) announced on Sunday that they ended their hunger strike on the 85th day.

“Long live the prison resistance,” the mothers of the hunger strikers chanted in Kurdish and applauded.

Temel also read the HDP Hakkari deputy Leyla Guven’s message written in Kurdish, which declared the end of her hunger strike which was initiated in November 2018.

She was being transported to a hospital at the time when Temel was reading the written statement on her behalf.

“But our struggle against isolation and our struggle for social peace will continue in all areas. This struggle must lead to an honorable peace,” she emphasized.

Guven underlined that Ocalan’s chance to make his ideas heard by others is not just important for the Kurdish people but for all the communities in Turkey.

Referring to those who committed suicide for the same cause, she said: “Zulkuf Gezen, Ayten Becet, Zehra Saglam, Medya Cinar, Yonca Akici, Sirac Yuksek, Mahsum Pamay, Umit Acar, and Ugur Sakar. They are the true owners and heroes of this process.”

Guven also referred to the 30 inmates who turned their hunger strikes into death fasts nearly a month ago. She stressed that they have manifested their “unshakable willpower.”

Death fasts ended 

The Kurdish inmates who have been on hunger strike also made a statement that was read by Deniz Kaya, their representative, on Sunday.

“We end our hunger strikes and death fasts in line with our leader’s call,” the inmates said in the statement, adding that they regard the call as “a responsibility that must be fulfilled.”

The Kurdish inmates highlighted that they received significant support from human rights organizations, law associations, and intellectuals in Turkey and across the world.

They also expressed their respect and thanks to the family members, especially mothers of the strikers, who have held sit-in protests in front of jails and attempted to make public statements despite violent police interventions to show their support to the prisoners.

“We will be strong physically, mentally and spiritually to accompany him [Ocalan] in his struggle for peace,” the inmates also promised.

Two weeks ago, Turkey’s Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul made a public statement and announced that Ankara has lifted a ban on lawyers visiting Ocalan in Imrali, an island prison where he has been held since he was captured in Kenya in 1999.

Some critics have claimed that the move might be an attempt to win over Kurdish voters by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) for the upcoming mayoral re-run polls in Istanbul.

The pro-Kurdish HDP, which supported AKP’s rival secular Republican People’s Party (CHP) candidate in the March 31 local elections, announced that they will do the same on the June 23 election re-run.

CHP’s Ekrem Imamoglu narrowly beat AKP’s candidate in the Istanbul mayoral race on March 31, but the election authorities annulled the vote, citing irregularities.

Ocalan is the founder and the leader of the PKK militant group, which is deemed a terrorist organization by the Turkish government, the European Union and the United States.

More than 40,000 people have died in the clashes between Turkish security forces and the PKK since the latter launched a separatist insurgency in Turkey’s southeast in 1984.

Some of the worst violence since the insurgency began was unleashed in 2015 when talks between Ocalan and Ankara on a peace process and a ceasefire broke down.

Since then, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP has formed alliances with nationalists who vilify the PKK leader and object to the peace process.

Turkey lifts visit ban on jailed PKK leader – says minister

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