Turkey: Conscientious objector's case focuses spotlight on military's role in society

7/18/07

Turkey's most famous conscientious objector is embroiled in yet another controversy with authorities. Having already served 701 days in prison over the past 12 years, officials want to put Osman Murat Ulke behind bars again in connection with his refusal to answer his draft notice in 1995. The most recent move against Ulke places Turkey at odds with the European Court of Human Rights, which last year ruled that the government violated his rights.

An official summons issued in June ordered Ulke to turn himself in to serve a 17-month prison sentence in connection with what authorities have deemed draft-dodging. If Ulke does not voluntarily surrender, an arrest warrant could be issued against him, a military prosecutor warned in the summons.

Ulke insists he is a conscientious objector to military service. However, Turkey, where all males must serve in the armed forces, does not recognize conscientious objection as a legal way out of the draft. Ulke's long tangle with authority began in 1995, when, as part of a nascent group dedicated to winning legal status for conscientious objection, he publicly burned his draft notice and declared to journalists; "I am not a soldier, and never will be."

In Israel or South Korea, conscientious objectors face imprisonment only once. In Turkey, however, pacifism can draw repeated punishment. In Ulke's case, punishment began in 1996, when he was prosecuted on charges of "alienating the public from the institution of military service." Rather than jailing him, authorities tried to "impress" him, forcibly taking him to a military post in the town of Bilecik. When he refused to don a uniform or to respond to orders, he was put in a military prison for insubordination.

A month later, he was released and immediately became caught in a Kafkaesque cycle of defiance and confinement within the closed system of military justice. From 1996-98, he was convicted of desertion by a military court on several occasions. His desertion convictions brought on a variety of civil penalties that had the cumulative effect of rendering him a non-person. For example, he is denied the right to hold a passport, or open a bank account. And he is legally barred from marrying the mother of his three-year-old son. Even a weekend trip with friends is fraught with danger. "Book into a hotel, and I could be arrested," Ulke says on the phone from his home in the western Turkish city of Izmir

In 1998, Ulke filed suit with the European Court of Human Rights seeking to force Turkey to confront the issue of conscientious objection. In January 2006, the court ruled that the punishments meted out against him "had been disproportionate to the aim of ensuring that he did his military service."

"The clandestine life amounting almost to ‘civil death' which the applicant has been compelled to adopt is incompatible with the punishment regime of a democratic society", the ECHR ruling added

Under the ruling, Turkey was found in breach of Article 3 of the Convention on Human Rights and ordered to pay Ulke €10,000 (about $13,800). In saluting the decision, Ulke stated that "conscientious objection has always been the sine qua non condition of my loyalty to my identity, character and convictions." Although the ECHR recognized that Ulke's suffering was brought about by the deprivation of rights, the court did not touch on the legality of conscientious objection

Since the ECHR ruling, Ulke has suffered from an increase in official harassment, including police surveillance, according to Human Rights Watch. The most recent summons would appear to totally flout the ECHR's decision. "It's possible the prosecutor hasn't heard of the judgment", says Ulke's British lawyer, Tony Fisher. "But that in itself constitutes a breach of the ECHR decision, which Turkey's government had an obligation to inform its judiciary about."

The Committee of Ministers, the European body charged with ensuring that states party to the convention comply with ECHR judgments, has been following Ulke's case closely since 2006. At a February 2007 meeting, it issued a statement deploring "the fact that the Turkish authorities had as yet taken no individual measure to put an end to the violation found by the Court [ECHR]."

This June, the Turkish authorities informed the Committee of Ministers that a draft law aimed at preventing repeated punishment of conscientious objectors was under preparation. Contacted by phone, officials were unable to say when the law might be passed.

"Turkey is normally pretty quick at complying with ECHR judgments", said Orhan Kemal Cengiz, a prominent Turkish human rights lawyer. "If there is delay here, it's because we're in the military zone."

Until mid-July, prosecutors had left Ulke alone for six years, in what appeared an attempt to avoid controversy. But that didn't make his life any easier

The case is placing the military's role in Turkish society in the spotlight at a sensitive time for the country, when parliamentary elections are to be held July 22, and the government's hopes for near-term accession to the European Union are flagging, if not altogether exhausted.

Ulke's predicament is tied to the fact that he lives in a country that prides itself on being a "nation of soldiers." From the start of their school education, Turkish children are encouraged to exalt the army. In the second year of high school, all students attend a compulsory class on "national security" taught by a military officer. Written under the army's auspices, the textbook used describes military service as "the most sacred service to the nation." A person who has not done it, it adds, "cannot be useful to himself, his family, or his homeland."

The attitude is widely echoed in traditional Turkish society, where men who have not done their military service are often considered unfit either to work or to marry

Questioning the military's preeminence remains a dangerous thing. A well-known novelist and columnist Perihan Magden faced 3 years in jail last year when an Istanbul prosecutor deemed an article she wrote in support of a civilian alternative to military service an "insult to Turkishness." A trial in 2006 resulted in her acquittal.

An author of a book on Turkish militarism, Ayse Gul Altinay, thinks the state has painted itself into a corner. "When you have presented [military service] as an essential part of national identity, how do you go about changing it?" she asks

Attitudes are nonetheless changing.

Ulke remembers that when he decided to declare his conscientious objection in 1992, even like-minded people thought it was "an act of insanity." "Now human rights organizations, parties and individuals are beginning to show sympathy, even if only passive," he says. "The taboo has been broken."

While the number of people evading military service in Turkey is thought to be more than 100,000, conscientious objectors remain a tiny minority, with only about 80 men openly stating their convictions. "That hasn't stopped almost all Turks hearing about us", says Ugur Yorulmaz, who studied in a military high school before turning pacifist.

Editor's Note: Nicolas Birch specializes in Turkey, Iran and the Middle East.

Posted July 18, 2007 © Eurasianet