TURKEY’S DISPOSSESSED PURGES, INSTABILITY AND
Liz Cookman reports from Ankara where a seventh extension of a state of emergency has brought new fears
Veli Sacilik’s 7-year-old daughter thinks her father’s full-time job is trying to get his job back. “Because my daughter knows I will be going on protests and demonstrations every day,” he said, “she thinks this is my daily employment.”
Mr Sacilik is one of more than a million people in Turkey who have fallen foul of the ongoing state of emergency, which was imposed after an attempted coup in July 2016.
After parliamentary approval yesterday, and despite widespread protests on Monday and concerns expressed by the United States and the European Union, the seventh extension of the temporary measures came into effect today.
Many fear the state of emergency has already led to widespread human rights offences. Last month, a report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said at least 152,000 civil servants have been dismissed since it was first declared.
At least 159,500 people have been arrested in relation to the emergency decrees and, in July 2016 alone, 50,000 passports were cancelled. A large number of people have left Turkey in search of temporary political asylum. The situation, said the UN, may have long-lasting socio-economic implications for the country.
Mr Sacilik, who lost an arm in 2000 in a violent accident that he believes was act of intimidation by the Turkish police, was previously a sociologist working as a civil servant for the department of disabled and care for the elderly, before the bloodiest coup attempt in the country’s history.
But five days after the putsch, when the state of emergency was declared and the purges began, he found his name among the thousands listed online on the government’s official gazette.
“It said that I was somehow linked with illegal organisations,” he said.
And since then he has been unable to find work because businesses are too worried they will be penalised for employing him and others on the list.
From the 4,000 Turkish lira (Dh3,628) monthly wage he used to support his family on, he, his wife and daughter now live off TL1,350 they receive from rent and union support. They have also had their passports cancelled.
So for 442 days and nights he took to the streets around Ankara’s Human Rights Monument to protest, and every day he was detained. Sometimes, he says, he was also the victim of police violence. His shoulder was broken, his spine injured and tear gas was sprayed at him. His wife and mother were also harmed – all on the grounds that their activities around the statue made them obstacles to passing traffic.
When Mr Sacilik complained, the police said they were just carrying out their duties. He is now forced to stand trial several times a week.
“They didn’t pay much attention to me in the beginning,” he said. “However, the more people got to know me in Turkey, they started saying: ‘These people are leftist, they are not Gulenists – those associated with Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, who the government holds responsible for the coup – at all. On what grounds are they to be jailed?’”
The monument, a statue of a woman reading the universal declaration of human rights, is now ringed with police barriers to “prevent us from protesting”, Mr Sacilik said.
“It is an image that is actually a good summary of the situation in Turkey at the moment.”
According to Yidirim Kaya, a party council member of the opposition CHP and head of its commission to help victims of the state of emergency, more than two million people have been affected by the extraordinary measures.
“They have been separated from their wives. Their children have become depressed. They