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Questioning the government for its alleged involvement in CIA’s dirty work
by Orhan Kemal Cengiz
Two are gripping the man tightly. Two others with scissors in their hands are carefully cutting his clothing with unbelievable speed. Cutting off his underwear and leaving him stark naked, they place the clothing in a bag. The man’s mouth, ears and crotch are inspected very thoroughly; something hard is inserted into his anus; a nappy is placed on him and then new clothes. This operation, occurring in absolute silence with only the use of hand gestures, takes 15-20 minutes to complete.
This is a procedure that is intended not only to break a person’s spirit but to make him feel humiliated. It is clear that every feature, each detail has been carefully thought through. It is an overwhelming exhibition of authority, a display in which every second is full of meaning.
I am talking about the “packaging” procedure made routine by the CIA. The rendered “packages,” who are abducted in broad daylight, were delivered to various places in the late hours of the night by secret crews departing on CIA airplanes, some to Guantanamo, some to be delivered to local torturers in Algeria, Morocco or Egypt and some to secret detention centers in Romania, Poland and Ukraine. In the small room in the airport the victims’ blindfolds were untied so they could watch the “show,” but they would have their eyes covered again for the entire flight; they could not drink water, they could not use the toilet, but would lie bound hand and foot on the floor of the plane.
The CIA had long been at this dirty job and practically every airport in Europe has been used as a transfer point for this procedure. Now, from the WikiLeaks cables, we know that the Adana Incirlik Airbase had also been used as a transfer point for CIA flights carrying detainees to their destinations, where they were delivered to their torturers, between 2002 and 2006.
These rendition programs and secret detention programs of the CIA have long been known all over the world. The EU Parliament adopted a report on CIA rendition in 2007, saying: “It is unlikely that European governments were unaware of rendition activities on their territory. It is indeed impossible to not be aware if you consider that more than 1,000 flights with stopovers in European territory took place in the last five years. In Italy and Germany some lawsuits have been brought to court against this practice of kidnapping in broad daylight.”
It is, of course, true for every country involved in this modern form of banditry that moral and legal repercussions should arise. While this government tries to give moral lessons to Israel and some other countries, its involvement in these kinds of international illegal operations against Muslims should be questioned particularly.
I fully agree with my fellow columnist, Lale Kemal from Today’s Zaman, who said in her Jan. 20 column that “the Turkish government now owes an apology and an explanation to the Turkish public for allowing the US’s dirty activities concerning the alleged terrorist suspects.”
In such times I really regret that we do not have efficient and capable political opposition parties that can raise real questions and force the government to give an accounting for these kinds of controversial issues. But our opposition parties instead are too involved in frivolous questions and are not capable of raising vital questions for the sake of democracy and human rights. This government’s alleged involvement in these operations will probably escape questioning. This moral question will not even come to the public’s attention in Turkey. That’s really a very big pity for this country.
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