Human Rights Foundation of Turkey

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Human Rights Foundation of Turkey
legal form Foundation, endowment
founding December 30, 1990
founder IHD and 32 people
Seat Ankara
main emphasis Human rights , torture
method Rehabilitation , documentation
Action space Turkey
people Yavuz Önen, Haldun Özen, Şebnem Korur Fincancı , Metin Bakkalcı
Website www.tihv.org.tr

The Human Rights Foundation of Turkey ( Türkiye İnsan Hakları Vakfı , also TİHV ) was founded in 1990 by the human rights association İHD and 32 individuals. It achieved official status on December 30, 1990. The TİHV sees the (free) treatment of victims of torture and the documentation of human rights violations in Turkey as its primary tasks . The TİHV is financed by donations and is supported by the UN , the Council of Europe , the Red Cross and Amnesty International , among others .

Treatment of victims of torture

The organization has five medical rehabilitation centers in the cities of Ankara , Istanbul , Izmir , Adana and Diyarbakır . By the end of 2010, 12,450 people had been treated free of charge in the centers for suffering from torture. In 2011, 452 people turned to the TIHV for treatment for the consequences of their torture . 320 of them said they had been tortured that year. By the end of November 2012, 506 people reported to the TIHV to be treated for the effects of torture. 217 said they were tortured in 2012. The work in the rehabilitation centers is statistically evaluated and can be viewed in Turkish and English in the form of annual reports both on the website of the organization and from the German support group DTF.

Documentation center

Daily reports on human rights violations in Turkey are published in the documentation center at the headquarters in Ankara. Since 2008 the reports have been published by both the TIHV and the DTF. Some of the annual reports are only available in Turkish. Of the large number of special reports, only a few have been published on the Internet.

The publications include:

  • İşkence Dosyası (Act of Torture) September 12, 1980–1995
  • Güneydoğu'da Sağlık Hizmetleri ve Sorunlar (Health Services and Problems in the Southeast)
  • Düşünce Özgürlüğü ve Göç (Freedom of Expression and Migration)
  • TİHV Yargıda (TİHV in court), 1998
  • İşkence ve Cezasızlık (Torture and Impunity), 2005
  • Medical image atlas: Education about torture in Turkey, 2007

International initiatives and awards

The foundation, which is one of the member organizations of the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT), took the initiative in March 1996 for a uniform guideline following an international symposium on "Medicine and Human Rights" organized by the Turkish Medical Association in Adana. Known as the Istanbul Protocol , the work involved 75 doctors, psychotherapists, lawyers and human rights activists, who together represented forty organizations from fifteen different countries. In addition to a number of national awards, the TIHV has also received several international awards for its work, with the European Human Rights Award in 1998 standing out among the awards.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Cf. TIHV in the 20th year since its foundation , a page of the German support group, Democratic Turkey Forum (DTF); Retrieved December 30, 2012
  2. See the report of the rehabilitation centers for 2011 (Turkish; PDF; 1.4 MB); Retrieved December 30, 2012
  3. See the DTF monthly report December 2012 ; Retrieved December 30, 2012
  4. Annual reports in Turkish and annual reports (English)
  5. The Campaign against Impunity has published an article by Knut Rauchfuss with the title The "Istanbul Protocol" enables effective investigation and documentation of torture (undated) on its website; Retrieved December 16, 2012
  6. They are listed on the Foundation's website as a list (Turkish) or list (English), accessed on December 30, 2012