Trial in Istanbul: doctor and terror propagandist?

Status: 01/11/2023 05:56 am

She accuses Turkey of using chemical weapons and fights against torture. Now a verdict is to be passed against the chairperson of the Turkish Medical Association. Because of propaganda for a terrorist organization.

By Markus Rosch, ARD Studio Istanbul

December 2022: Dozens of doctors and opposition politicians demonstrate in front of the judicial plaza in Istanbul against the trial of Sebnem Korur Fincanci, the head of the Turkish Medical Association. Prosecutors have just asked for a sentence of seven and a half years in prison. Your defense speaks of a “judicial scandal”.

Fincanci has been in custody since October. The accusation is propaganda for a terrorist organization. In a program on the Kurdish TV channel “Medya Haber,” the renowned doctor spoke about the alleged use of chemical warfare agents by the Turkish army during the invasion of the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.

Allegations of chemical weapons use

In the program, the doctor describes her impressions after watching video recordings that showed two dying PKK fighters after contact with toxic substances. Fincanci called for the inclusion of international and independent investigations.

In the program, Fincanci also criticized the fact that a delegation from the medical organization IPPNW had been denied access to the regions affected by Turkish chemical weapons attacks. The Turkish government has denied allegations of the use of chemical weapons.

Arrest after lecture in Cologne

At the end of October, Fincanci gave a lecture in Cologne on the human rights situation in Turkey. This did not go down well with the government in Ankara either. Despite the threat of arrest, she then returned to Turkey and was promptly arrested on her arrival on October 26.

Fincanci describes the prison conditions as dramatic. Despite a hernia, she is said to have been taken handcuffed in a bus from a hemp facility in Ankara to Istanbul for the first day of the trial. Since then she has been in Bakirköy prison.

“politically motivated”

The human rights organization Amnesty International complained that the trial was politically motivated. The German Medical Association is also committed to Fincanci’s release. Its chairman Klaus Reinhardt calls for the proceedings to be dropped and says that doctors should intervene if there is a suspicion of human rights violations.

Fincanci herself is combative: “As a human rights activist, I have a duty to defend freedom of expression and the public’s right to information,” she says.

The head of the Turkish Medical Association, Fincanci, is combative: “As a human rights activist, I have a duty to defend freedom of expression and the public’s right to information.”

Image: AP

use against torture

Born in Istanbul in 1959, the forensic scientist is also a board member of the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey and has been campaigning against torture in her homeland for years. In 2018 she received the Hessian Peace Prize. In 2011, the doctors’ organization IPPNW and the Medical Peace Work association awarded her a prize for medical peace work, including for her work on the so-called “Istanbul Protocol”.

The document serves as a guide to identifying and documenting torture and its consequences, including for the United Nations. The forensic scientist also worked for the International Criminal Court and was involved in the 1996 exhumation of mass graves and autopsies in Bosnia.

State repression for years

With her commitment to uncovering cases of torture in Turkey, however, the forensic scientist often encountered resistance there. As a result, her chair in forensic medicine at Istanbul University was revoked several times.

She was arrested for ten days in 2016. A two-year prison sentence followed in 2018, but the Turkish constitutional court ruled that it violated freedom of expression and overturned it. The trial ended in an acquittal.

Judgment after just three days of trial

Today, after only three days of trial, a verdict is to be pronounced. In addition, the public prosecutor’s office has filed a civil lawsuit against the Turkish Medical Association in order to force a new appointment to the chair.

Protests are expected again in front of the court. On the first day of the trial, Sebnem Korur Fincanci ended her defense speech with the words of the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet: “Life is a serious matter.” It remains to be seen how serious it will be for her.

source site