Internally Displaced People
Around a million people became displaced from towns and villages in south-eastern Turkey during the 1980s and 1990s as a result of the insurgent actions of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the counter-insurgency policies of the Turkish government.
The Migrants’ Association for Social Cooperation and Culture (GÖÇ-DER) was founded in Istanbul in 1997. Branches were later established in Diyarbakir, Van and Hakkari. GÖÇ-DER has been sued five times for its activities. Four of them ended in acquittal. One case demanding the closure of GÖÇ-DER Diyarbakir is still pending after the Court of Cassation cancelled the decision of Diyarbakir Judicial Court No. 1 not to band the association. This court has to hear the case again and scheduled the next hearing for 2 February 2010.
In July 2008 Beşir Atalay, Minister of the Interior, answered a request by CHP for Adıyaman province, Şevket Köse. He said that 314,000 people had applied for aid in order to return to their village. As of May 2008 151,469 people had returned to their villages in 14 provinces. They had been paid about 530 million Turkish pounds.
On 12 April 2006, Human Rights Watch researcher Jonathan Sugden was detained by police in Bingöl, while he was carrying out research in the predominately Kurdish southeast of the country into the possibilities for IDPs to return and abuses allegedly involving the Turkish gendarmerie and government-armed local defense units called “village guards.” He was deported to London the next day.
Read more about this topic: Human Rights In Turkey
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