İnsan Hakları Derneği

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Logo of the HRA

The Human Rights Association (HRA; Turkish: İnsan Hakları Derneği İHD) is an association in Turkey with its headquarters in Ankara.

1 History
2 Structure and campaigns
3 Persecution
4 References

[edit] History

The HRA was founded on 17 July 1986 by 98 founders. They included lawyers, journalists, intellectuals (in Turkish aydınlar are not academics, rather enlightened people), but mainly relatives of political prisoners. The Human Rights Association works on all kind of human rights, but is mainly focussed on abuses in Turkey. In 1992 the statute was changed to cover huamanitarian aspects as laid out in the Geneva Conventions.^[1] Since then the HRA has also criticized human violations of armed groups.

[edit] Structure and campaigns

According to official figures of the HRA there are 16,000 members in 34 branches in 81 provinces of Turkey.^[2] The 24 board members are elected for terms of two years on the association's general assembly. The headquarters in Ankara as well as many branches (in particular the branches in Istanbul and Diyarbakir are running commissions according to the need. The commission cover subjects such as the Kurdish question, women, children, prisons and torture.

Some of the large number of campaigns of the HRA were: freedom of expression (2001), general amnesty (1999), abolition of the deth penalty, abolition of the state security courts (1997). In 2004 a project called "Don't remain silent against torture" (İşkenceye Sessiz Kalma) was started.^[3]

[edit] Persecution

Since its foundation the HRA has been facing State intervention into its work, but also direct violence of individuals or nationalist groups. On the website of the HRA the following figures are given: 400 court cases against executives of the association; the gouverneurs of certain provinces ordered the closure of branches 30 times; the chair of the branch in Diyarbakir that stayed close between 1997 and 2000, Osman Baydemir, had to face 60 investigative or penal cases against him in one year; in 2000 the branch in Izmir had the same number of cases initiated against it; because of speeches in 1995 and 1996 the then President of the HRA, Akın Birdal was sentenced to 20 months' imprisonment, of which he severed 14 months.

Besides the HRA lists 14 people who as members of the HRA were killed. On 12 May 1998 Akın Birdal hardly survived an assassination attempt, when two assailants fired 13 shots at him in the office of the association. On 25 November 1999 a group of 30 to 35 persons close to the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) stormed into the office and beat the new President Hüsnü Öndül. Repeatedly Amnesty International issued urgent actions to draw attention and prevent threats against human rights activists of the HRA, e.g. for Eren Keskin, chair of the branch in Istanbul.^[4]