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Islamic Human Rights Commission
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14 November 2002

PRESS RELEASE: No justice for Islamists in Islamic Turkey
Campaigning Journalist and daughters rearrested.

IHRC are deeply concerned at recent events in Turkey regarding journalist and activist Huda Kaya and her three daughters. Huda Kaya and her daughters, Nuralhuq, Nurcihan and Intisaar Saaticoglu had previously faced a possible death penalty for attending a demonstration against the university headscarf ban in Malatya, in October 1998.

The reporting of IHRC trial observers, as well as an international campaign by IHRC in 1999 led to the four and their 70 co-defendants being given reduced suspended sentences, after which the Turkish authorities tried to appeal to various appellate courts.

Since then Huda Kaya and her daughters have been rearrested and released several times by the Turkish authorities. They have currently been detained as a result of the enforcement of these sentences as well as an additional sentence of four and a half years for Huda Kaya relating to her alleged involvement with a banned organization, Selam-Tevhid.

It is deeply sinister and ironic that these arrests have taken place at a time when Turkish voters have elected an apparently Islamic minded party into government. The removal of the headscarf ban in universities and public institutions, as well as the rectification of the many miscarriages of justice perpetrated against political dissidents be they Muslim or otherwise are tests that the new administration must meet if it is to fulfill the values it promotes.

IHRC urges the incoming Turkish administration to take immediate and effective action to ensure that these travesties of justice are immediately remedied.

For more information, please contact the Press Office on (+44) 20 8902 0888, email info@ihrc.org. Background information on the persecution of Muslims and others in Turkey can be found at the links below.

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Background information

Articles:

Ataturks’ Children:
http://www.newint.org/issue315/endpiece.htm

Reports:
For more information on Huda Kaya and her daughters’ case please visit:
Report of IHRC Observer into the Trial of Huda Kaya and the Malatya 75
01 July 1999. British barrister Osama Daneshyar’s report into the trial of Huda Kaya and the Malatya 75, 51 of whom faced the death penalty for participating in a peaceful demonstration in support of women suspended from university for wearing hijab.
https://www.ihrc.org.uk/show.php?id=54

Turkey Unveiled: The Treatment and Welfare of Political Prisoners
01 June 1999. An overview by IHRC of the treatment of prisoners held for their beliefs in Turkey in the late 1990s.
https://www.ihrc.org.uk/show.php?id=63

Routing Out the Opposition
01 October 2000. Nafeez Ahmed’s analysis of the persecution of opposition, in particular Islamist and Muslims in Turkey.
https://www.ihrc.org.uk/show.php?id=61

Islamic Human Rights Commission
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