A worrying year for rights
What did we gain and lose in 2024? If we are going to look at the year from a rights perspective and talk about human rights starting with the “right to life,” the Human Rights Association (HRA) and the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (HRFT), two well-established institutions in this field, describe 2024 as “worrying” in their report evaluating the year. They had shared this comprehensive text, which covers eleven months and is based entirely on statistical data, with the public on the occasion of December 10 Human Rights Day.
The source of this concern was shown as “the political power that has completely abandoned the idea of human rights as a reference.” The policies that are expressed within the framework of the right to life, “which polarize society by spreading discrimination and racism, which turn all issues of the country from the economy to public health into security issues, which are based on violence, and which make conflict and war the only method for solving the Kurdish issue and international problems in particular,” can actually be identified as the source of other human rights violations throughout 2024. Taking every social issue as a security problem, creating enemies, punishing these ‘enemies’ in various ways by violating their rights... This is what is meant by the normalisation of state of emergency practices; these practices are not legal, they are not “normal”.
Fuelling hatred
According to the data of the two organisations, there are 10 deaths and 14 injuries caused by law enforcement officers in 2024. Six more people need to be added here for those who were hit by vehicles belonging to security officers or official institutions and those who died due to explosions of mines etc. It was a year in which the number of prisons increased and the number of complaints about the conditions in prisons increased to the point of violations, which mostly went unpunished. At least 51 people lost their lives and 14 people were injured in prisons due to illness, suicide, violence and neglect. Let us add the data presented by the Ministry of Justice in response to a parliamentary question: In the first 11 months of 2024, 709 people lost their lives in prisons for various reasons. Postponement of release on various grounds is one of the most frequent examples of the increasing arbitrariness in prison practices.
Unfortunately, refugees/asylum-seekers, Kurds, LGBTI+ persons, Alevis and non-Muslims were targeted many times throughout the year due to the violence triggered by hostile policies; at least 12 people were killed and 33 people were injured as a result of such racist, phobic and hateful attacks. At least 6 people lost their lives and 9 people were injured as a result of discriminatory, racist and hateful attacks targeting refugees/asylum seekers. Animals should be added to this wave of hatred. Despite mass objections, the law paving the way for the collection and killing of stray animals was passed by the parliament this year.
The Worker Health and Worker Safety Assembly (WHWSA) has not yet released the December tally, but we know that at least 1708 workers lost their lives as of the end of November due to lack of necessary precautions. When we look at the social media posts of WHWSA, it becomes clear that we are facing a higher than average loss of life in December. In Balıkesir Karesi alone, 11 people died in an explosion at the factory of ZSR Explosive Industry.
Bianet, which has been tracking and documenting the reported murders of women for years, says that at least 327 women and 40 children were killed in the first 11 months of this year. The Memorial Counter displays the names of 425 women who have lost their lives due to violence, in fact male violence.
The oppression against LGBTI+s, which has reached the level of rainbow hunting, manifested itself with at least 11 discriminatory, racist and phobic bans this year. HRFT recorded that law enforcement intervened in at least 19 peaceful meetings and demonstrations for women's and LGBTI+ rights. At least 301 people were detained under torture and other ill-treatment.
According to the Research Report on the Perception of Impunity in Violence against Women, Children and Animals, based on interviews conducted by the Social Democracy Foundation with 1067 people, approximately 50 per cent of the participants directly link the increase in violence against women with the withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, because this is how a ground that facilitates acts of violence is formed.
Crisis creating a chain of violations
Turkey lived a period believing that torture and ill-treatment fell behind, convinced by this showcase. Yet, this year alone, 692 people or their relatives have applied to the HRFT with allegations of torture and ill-treatment. This is only the number of those who consider applying to a human rights institution in case of victimization, and who have the power and means to do so. Likewise, 2024 was a year in which freedom of assembly and demonstration was largely ignored. According to the data of the HRA Documentation Unit, at least 4,368 people were took into custody under torture and ill-treatment as a result of the intervention of law enforcement forces in peaceful protests; at least 358 peaceful meetings and demonstrations were intervened, prevented or banned. At least 105 people were tortured and ill-treated on the streets and at least 38 people were tortured and ill-treated during house raids. The number of children who were detained during meetings and demonstrations with practices considered as torture and ill-treatment is at least 81.
If we talk about freedom of thought and expression, many people will wholeheartedly admit that violations have become daily without the need for data. All kinds of political, artistic, commercial, academic, religious and moral expressions of freedom of expression have been in this mangle. According to HRA data, 29 journalists and press workers were in prison as of the end of November. In the same period of time, investigations were initiated against 42 journalists. This process was turned into an intimidation and a social message with house raids without giving the journalist time to make a statement. Newspapers were confiscated, websites were banned, artists and writers were put on trial for their creations.
The right to elect and be elected was interfered with and trustees were appointed to municipalities, most of which belonged to the DEM Party. The intensity of the oppression and rights violations against Kurds can be described in a “fill in the blanks” way, for example, by what happened to those who were dancing the halay with Kurdish songs. At least 78 people, including a child, were detained on the grounds of “making organisation propaganda”. Even 38 of these people were arrested.
The deepening economic crisis must also be considered as a mechanism of human rights violations, since it is essentially a transfer of wealth. Except for a small minority who have multiplied their millions in the last few years, millions of people living on wages below the poverty line are living at or very close to the hunger line in the face of unstoppable inflation. Poverty in itself is enough to destroy many of the rights of individuals, from health to education, from housing to security, and the effects of the crisis are felt even more severely by those disadvantaged by society.
