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Newszine
17 January Februay March 2000 |
Tayyip Oruc Campaign
 Tayyip
is a 26 year-old Kurdish man from Turkey. He came to England in the
summer of 1998 as an asylum seeker following years of suppression
and beatings from the Turkish military. He suffered at the hands of
the Turkish regime simply because he insists on maintaining his Kurdish
culture, language and identity.
Tayyip suffered constant detention, threats, beatings and torture
because of his sympathies with the PKK, the Kurdish Workers Party.
He never took up arms, but, along with many Kurdish people in Turkey,
he supported the PKK by helping to raise funds and donations of food.
Tayyip says, "There is no membership of the PKK. Everyone in
our village and the surrounding area support the PKK because we are
Kurds, and the PKK are fighting for our rights."
Even at school, Kurdish children are not allowed to speak their own
language and are denied the right to practice their own culture. The
teachers encourage and reward certain children to spy on their friends
and to report them for speaking Kurdish. Tayyip and his school friends
were often beaten by the teachers for speaking Kurdish in their break-times.
"The teachers would hold our fingers together and beat the ends
of them until they filled with blood."
Tayyip and his brother ran a minibus service and suffered constant
detentions and beatings because the military were suspicious that
they were helping the PKK who were hiding out in the mountains near
the village. Any time there was a skirmish near Tayyip's village,
he would be picked-up and held without ever being charged, and then
beaten and tortured. "The soldiers would beat me and make me
stand on one leg for long periods of time" he said. "I was
very frightened and had to do as I was told as many people were known
to 'disappear' following detentions." The last straw was when
Tayyip was so badly beaten with batons that he realised he could no
longer risk his life in Turkey and he had to flee.
The UK government supports the Turkish state because it is a member
of NATO and the Council of Europe. It is a friend of the west. Turkey
is being rewarded for its support of NATO aggression by being invited
to apply for the next round of European Union expansion. Turkey pretends
that it is concerned for human rights and has signed and ratified
the European Convention on Human Rights. Yet Turkey's widespread use
of arbitrary arrest and torture by security forces all violate the
Convention, along with a range of other human rights abuses. Currently
over 1,500 cases are pending before the European Convention organs
in Strasbourg against the state of Turkey.
Tayyip will be at serious risk of further persecution, torture or
even death if he were to be returned to his oppressors. The Kurdish
Human Rights Project says: "The current lack of safeguards for
detainees and the fact that a person has applied for asylum in a Western
European country means, in our
opinion, that the person would not only be detained immediately upon
entry to Turkey but also that he/she would be tortured again."
His claim for political asylum in the UK was refused and he has lost
the only appeal open to him. He is now under threat of deportation.
Tayyip's family have been visited by the military on several occasions
since his departure, and are aware that he is somewhere in Europe.
Tayyip has never taken up arms against the Turkish military nor fought
with the PKK. His only activity was to support the organisations that
tried to protect the distinct identity and rights of the Kurdish people.
Please support the Tayyip Oruc Campaign
For leaflets, petitions, model letters etc.
Contact: the Tayyip Oruc Campaign
c/o North East Coalition for Asylum Rights
46 Roseberry Road, Middlesbrough TS4 2LJ
Tel. 01642 211117 |
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