Gov’t advances reform bill on children, CHP opposes

Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin on Wednesday met with representatives of opposition parties to ask for their support for legal amendments to improve the condition of minors who run afoul of the law.Objecting to some of the text in the draft bill, the Republican People's Party (CHP) claimed that such a regulation will pave the way for the retrial of outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan, who is serving a life sentence on İmralı Island in the Sea of Marmara.

The bill envisages the retrial of minors convicted under the Counterterrorism Law who are tried at specially authorized high criminal courts at juvenile courts with the aim of securing more lenient sentences. The bill itself will still be considered a subset of the Counterterrorism Law and the Turkish Penal Code (TCK).

The draft also seeks to allow the possibility of commuting the sentences handed out to minors, a stipulation the current law does not allow. Article 9 of the proposed bill offers the possibility of a retrial of some cases the European Courts of Human Rights has decided should be retried.

While the CHP opposes the bill, saying Öcalan might benefit from the text, many legal experts say the draft has nothing to do with the retrial of Öcalan and as such would not allow any possibility of retrial for the jailed leader of the terrorist group.

However, CHP parliamentary group chairman Hakkı Süha Okay said his party is against Article 9 of the draft and demands its deletion. “We will not sign anything that will provide an opportunity of giving amnesty to the terrorist leader [Öcalan]. We have conveyed our concerns to the government. These points will be discussed at the Parliamentary Justice Commission,” Okay said.

Ergin, after meeting with CHP deputies, said the CHP's reservations have been noted but insisted that there is absolutely no possibility the new regulation could apply to Öcalan.

Diyarbakır Bar Association Chairman Emin Aktar said that during meetings with government officials regarding this bill, they underlined that the draft should concentrate only on minors.

Some argue the government appears to have boosted opposition to the bill by keeping the scope of the text broad. For example, including the retrial option for cases referred by the European court open does not serve well the cause of minors who are in conflict with the law. “Adding other regulations creates problems here as well, but it seems the government did not listen to us,” Aktar told Today’s Zaman.

Retired judge Ümit Kardaş argues, however, that the bill did not go far enough to tackle all the problems. He believes the draft has nothing to do with Öcalan but that it also does not answer all the problems affecting minors. “A one-sentence regulation will be enough, namely: ‘The TCK and Counterterrorism Law should not be applied to children’,” he told Today’s Zaman.

Sadullah Ergin (2nd L) met with CHP officials to ask for support for planned amendments regarding minors who are tried as adults for participating in illegal demonstrations.

Pro-Kurdish party supports bill

Minister Ergin also met with pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) representatives. After the meeting, he said the BDP supports the draft.

The BDP’s Ayla Akat Ata underlined that the BDP supports the draft unconditionally although they think inadequacies remain.

The Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) did not object to the draft either. Mehmet Şandır, MHP parliamentary group chairman, said after meeting with Ergin that the children are in need of a decent regulation that will protect them from terrorism and prison. He added that Minister Ergin had submitted a file to the MHP regarding the bill and that after examining it, they will outline their views.

The government, as a part of its democratization initiative, submitted a bill in December regarding the situation of the minors who face being tried as adults due to terrorism-related crimes but later withdrew it after social unrests in which minors participated in demonstrations.

According to the Turkish juvenile system, minors should be tried in juvenile courts, but when it comes to allegations of violations of the Counterterrorism Law and the TCK, minors are tried as adults. Most minors arrested under the Counterterrorism Law are of Kurdish ethnicity and are detained or arrested while participating in demonstrations or rallies in southeastern and eastern Anatolia.

There are around 4,000 minors who have broken these laws. Some of them face prison sentences of up to 25 years for throwing stones at security forces. In 2006, amendments to Article 9 of the Counterterrorism Law allowed minors between the ages of 16 and 18 to be tried as adults in high criminal courts. Another amendment to Article 13 of the Counterterrorism Law made it impossible for these minor’s sentences to be postponed or commuted to another form of punishment. In some instances, children under 15 are tried as adults, but in a number of these cases, they are able to have their sentences postponed or commuted, as Article 13 indicates. “The penalty of imprisonment given in the context of these crimes cannot be commuted to optional sanctions or suspended. However, this provision is not applicable to children under the age of 15,” it states.

According to the Justice for Children Initiative (JCI), an advocacy group for children’s rights, these amendments will fail to protect minors so long as other controversial articles in the TCK remain, such as Article 220, which states, “Any person who commits a crime in the name of an organization, even if not a member, shall also be punished for the crime of being a member of the organization.”

The JCI noted that, aside from these regulations, the Supreme Court of Appeals ruled in 2006 that “even if no membership in the illegal organization is identified, simply participating in a demonstration will be regarded as membership in the organization.”

The Supreme Court of Appeals indicated that in such cases, Article 314 of the TCK should apply, mandating a 10-year prison term.

The JCI indicates that as long as the decision of the Supreme Court of Appeals and Article 220 of the TCK remain in effect, it will not be possible to save any minor accused of a crime.

Apart from all these objections, the JCI also underlines the importance of the approach to children who are in conflict with the law.

JCI’s Feray Salman, who is also the spokeswoman of the Human Rights Joint Platform (IHOP), said the important thing is to keep children away from courts.

“The courts should be the last resort. The freedom of children should not be limited; restrictions on freedom should be considered as the last thing to be applied and such an understanding should be developed,” she told Today’s Zaman.

Salman added that minors who are now in prison or those who dropped out of school because of being tried should return to school. “A mechanism should be established to make sure these children return to school. We have heard that some school principals do not accept these children back in their schools. Such a mechanism should also find ways for these children to bridge the educational gap that emerged while they were in prison or standing trial,” Salman said.