Turks pilloried for rights abuses

A STORM is brewing in the West about Turkey's deteriorating human rights record, with a new clutch of reports arriving in Istanbul yesterday that will probably add to the agonising of Turkish intellectuals, the defensive statements of officials and, most likely, the defiant silence of the security forces involved.

Human Rights Watch of the United States condemned forcible police examinations of women's virginity in alleged prostitution cases - and in some political cases. Reporters Sans Frontieres, a French human rights group, told of the state of the Turkish press in a study, Suffocation. And in Britain, Amnesty International issued another broadside against political jailing, disappearances and murders.

'Turkey did make some progress for a while. Now it's sliding right back,' said Amnesty International's Jonathan Sugden, explaining the thrust of the group's new 16- page report, Dissident Voices Jailed Again.

The Amnesty report showed how freedom of expression about ethnic Kurdish matters has been attacked since the government declared all-out war on the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party guerrillas in mid-1993.

'Many of those now imprisoned or threatened with imprisonment have been convicted solely for the expression of their non-violent opinions,' the report said, demanding an end to 'systematic torture' and reform of the 'draconian provisions of the Anti-Terror Law'. It called on the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe to send an investigative mission.