Category Archives: Turkey

Middle East, Syrian Conflict, Turkey

ISIS sold human slaves in Turkey.

Yazidi girls separated from their family

Yazidi girls separated from their families.

The German television station, ARD (Consortium of Public Broadcasters in Germany), produced footage documenting the slave trade being conducted by the Islamic State (ISIS) through a liaison office in the province of Gaziantep (also known as Antep) in Turkey, near the border with Syria.

The video originally aired on November 29, 2015.

The German TV channels NDR and SWR declared on their website:

“IS offers women and underage children in a kind of virtual slave market with for-sale photos… The transfer of money, as the reporter discovered, takes place through a liason office in Turkey.”

“For weeks, NDR and SWR accompanied a Yazidi negotiator, who, on behalf of the families, negotiates with the IS for the release of the slaves and their children. … the women are sold in a digital slave market to the highest bidder. 15,000 to 20,000 US dollars are a typical price. Similar sums for ransom are also required to free Yazidis. The money is then transferred via IS-liaison offices and middlemen to the terrorist group.”

“NDR and SWR were present at the liberation of a woman and her three small children, aged between two and four years old, and followed the negotiations. How many Yazidi slaves are still ‘owned’ by IS is unclear. Experts estimate that there still could be hundreds.”

Turkey is a member of NATO.

Click here to view video of Yazidi girls being separated from their families.

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Turkey

Turkey bombed villages, killing 38 people and blamed it on PKK.

All information for this blog entry taken from judgement made by the European Court of Human Rights on March 24, 2014.

This incident occurred on March 26, 1994. On this day, military planes and a helicopter circled two villages and then started to bomb them. The two villages were  Kocagili and Kuskonar. As a result, 13 people in Kocagili village and 25 people in Kuskonar village lost their lives. Most of those who were killed were children, women or elderly. Thirty four of the dead included seven babies and a number of older children. In addition, a total of 13 people were injured.

When the bombing was widely reported in the national and international media and was condemned by human rights organisations, members of the military exerted pressure on the villagers and warned them not to make official complaints to the judicial authorities. Journalists were prevented from entering the hospitals where the injured were being treated, and from speaking to the villagers.

The Government of Turkey submitted that the villages had been attacked by the PKK.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled:

(i) that there has been a failure by the Government of Turkey to comply with Article 38 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”).  In other words, Turkey did not allow the Court of Human Rights to effectively conduct an investigation.

(ii) that there has been a violation by the Government of Turkey of Article 2 of the Convention in its procedural aspect on account of the failure to carry out an effective investigation into the bombing of the two villages.

(iii) that there has been a violation by the Government of Turkey of Article 3 of the Convention on account of the circumstances surrounding the bombing of the applicants’ villages and the lack of any assistance provided to the applicants by the national authorities.

Turkey is a member of NATO.

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