Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

REVUE DE PRESSE~ PRESS REVIEW~BERHE\lOKA. ÇAPÊ~RNlSTA STAMPA~DENTRO DE LA PRENSA~BASIN ÖZETi
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became apparent that the two: men they. wère in.structed' to seek were'Ö zgûr
GÜndem correspondents who had beendetained only threeweeks earlier.
Neighbors confirm that the two men left their apartments some three weeks ago.
and have not been seen since. .
Isak Tepe later learned that while he was on his way to Elazig, his sister-in-law,
Tatvan, was contacted byanother an0!lymous caller who offered to release Ferhat
Tepe if Tatvan's son, thought to have joined a guerilla organization, turns himself
in to the armed forces.
Isak Tepe suspects that the voice of the July 29 and August 4 caller belongs to an
army officer whom he had met several weeks earlier at a meeting between local
politicians and police officials. According to him, the officer was partièularly
hostile to the DEP, whom he bitterly criticized for advocating on behalf of
murdered PKK guerrillas but not on behalf of murdered armyofficers from the
same villages. Isak Tepe managed to record the August 4 telephone call and quotes
the unidentified caller: "now you can feel the pain that the families of killed
soldiers feel. "
Although several teams of special police were said to have been patrolling the
streets on the night of Mr. Tepe's abduction, the Police Headquarters in Bitlis
claim to have no knowledge of or information on the disappearance, and Amnesty
International noted that the police seemed to be making no serious effort to
conduct an investigation into the kidnapping. According to AI!lnesty, the
abduction was "reminiscent of previous similar cases where involvement of the
security forces is alleged." Mr. Isak Tepe appealed for help from the local police
authorities, the Governor of Bitlis, the Chief of Turkish General Staff, and both
Prime Minister Ciller and Minister of the Interior Gazioglu, but received no
response.
Inlight of the disappearance and murder of Vedat Aydin in July 1991, Hasan
Kaya and Metin Can In February 1~93, and most recently Ferhat Tepe, we are also
deeply concerned for the safety , of Ozgur .. eundem reporter, Aysel Malkaç, who was
lastseen.near heroffiee building in the Kumkapi district of Istanbul on August 7,
1993. Ozgûreûndem niairltaihs ina recently issued statement that Ms. Malkaç
was takenintocustod~ by the civil police, but police officials deny any knowledge.
of her whereabouts. Ozgur eundem . employees . who have. begun theirown
investigations into her disappearance have allegedly been followed and harassed.
The employees and ~lstributors of Ozgur eundem have been the target of a series
of attacks in the past year. Of the fifteen journalists who have been killed in
Turkey since"January 1992, eight were corresp()ndents for Özgür eundem.
Vendors and distributors of the newspaper in the southeast have been subject to
violent attacks, and many have lost either their businesses or their lives. Thirtyfive
of the last thirty-eight issues have been banned by local courts on the grounds
. of violating the 1991 Anti.-Terror Law. Financial difficulties forced the
newspaper to close down from January 1993 until its reopening in April; the
paper's news editor was arrested only a few weeks later, and in July, Davut
Karadag, the newspaper's editor-in-:chief, was taken into custody for violating the
Anti-.Terr~r Law. At a hearingon July22, the court ordered the newspaper
suspended until September 21i when the courts will consider issuinga permanent
closure order on the newspaper.