TORTUOUS ROAD TO FREEING TURKEY'S PRESS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100230003-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 21, 2011
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: March 31, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/21: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100230003-6
J_ CHICAGO TRIBUNE
ARTICLE APPEARE
ON FAGE_ d
Tortuous road to freeing Turkey's press
Assignment:
Turkey
?y Terry Atlas
Chicago Triix ne
ISTANBUL-The ugly secret about torture in
Turkey's prisons is coming out of the shadows
and onto the front pages of the increasingly
free-wheeling Turkish press.
There has been remarkable reporting in re-
cent months on the sensitive subject that had
been declared off-limits. The leading news
magazine of Turkey, Nokta, which means
Point, recently ran a cover story on the confes-
sion of a self-admitted torturer. Similarly, the
most-respected daily newspaper, Cumhuriyet,
has carried first-hand accounts by people who
said they were tortured while in custody.
The government doesn't deny that such
things happen, but it says cases of abuse are
isolated and not sanctioned as a matter of
policy. Reporting on this subject, and scores of
others, was prohibited after the generally wel-
comed military takeover in 1980.
The move back toward democracy and the
lifting of martial law in most provinces have
enabled the Turkish press to confront re-
strictions on what it may print. The newly
acquired freedoms have not been popular with
the authorities, however.
Two names that most Turks didn't expect to
see again in print, former Prime Minister.
Bulent Ecevit on the political Left and
Suleyman Demirel on the Right, now are
quoted by the press. They have resurfaced in
print despite a government order banning them
from political activity.
Even more telling, perhaps, is the lively
debate underway on what materials are con-
sidered pornographic, typically not a subject
open for discussion in a largely Moslem nation.
There's a Turkish edition of Playboy magazine
that debuted last year, but that is not what has
people worked up. Several of the daily news-
papers, trying to increase their circulation,
have taken a page from the British tabloid
press and started running nude photographs.
But the wraps remain tight in two areas-
criticism of President Kenan Evren, the gener-
al who led the military takeover; and the
military.
Turkey wants the world to note the plight of
Bulgaria's vanishing Turkish ethnic minority.
Ten years ago, the official government census
in Bulgaria reported about 800,000 ethnic Turks,
saC.rt,iaar thonhes say there are
nn othnir 'itiirlre liuino
TURKEY ? are remarkable: Au-
"karao Diyarbakir was just completed,
or about one-tenth of
the population.
The results of the
latest count, which
happened is no mys-
tery. A year ago, ap-
parently in anticipa-
tion of the upcoming
census, the government stepped up its "Bulgar-
ization" campaign to erase the country's larg-
est ethnic minority.
Turkish schools and mosques have been
closed, speaking or writing in Turkish has been
prohibited in public and thousands of Turks
have been forced to change their names to
Bulgarian and Christian ones. New identity
cards were issued and essential services, such
as medical care, were denied to anyone pre-
senting old documents with Turkish or Moslem
names.
"They made Turks change their names at
gunpoint, and those who objected were incar-
cerated, threatened and killed," a Turkish
diplomat said.
Amnesty International, the human-rights
group, said more than 500 ethnic Turks have
been killed by security forces in Bulgaria since
late last year. Some reports say there has been
violent resistance to the changes.
All of this, understandably, has left relations
very tense between Bulgaria and Turkey,
neighboring countries that have many families
who trace their roots to villages in what now is
Bulgaria.
"Every family is involved one way or anoth-
er with this," said Ambassador Turget Tu-
lumen, director general of the Turkish govern-
ment's press and information office. Tulumen's
family comes from Bulgaria.
Turkey is perhaps the most important place
for the U.S. to electronically eavesdrop
Soviet military activities. a so sticat
American-mane istenui sts have become
all but irreplaceable in t h! w e of the loss of
outposts in Iran after the revolution there.
In a recent report, the Congressional Re-
search Service in Washington provided some
details on the secret activities of the mte i-
gence sites in Turkey.
Two of the largest and most important radar
and communications centers are at Sinop,
which is on the Black Sea coast in north-central
Turkey; and at Diyarbakir, in southeast
Turkey. Sinop collects data on the Soviets' air
and naval activities in the Black Sea as well as
on Soviet missile tests. A smaller facility, near
Ankara in Belbasis, is a seismographic data-
monitoring installation that can detect Soviet
nuclear tests.
Turkey has on occasion found these sites to
be useful bargaining chips with the United
States. In 1975, after Congress had imposed a
weapons embargo on Turkey after its invasion
of Cyprus, Ankara cut off American use of the
listening posts. Three years later, President
Jimmy Carter signed legislation ending the
arms embargo after intense bargaining with
Congress. The American ears were back on
within two weeks.
STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/21: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100230003-6