Thursday, March 6, 2014

US report slams Turkey for endemic corruption

Corruption in Turkey has become so endemic that it can be qualified as a “violation of human rights,” according to a report by the US State Department released on February 27.
It may be interesting for many to observe that there is no improvement in Turkey mentioned in the 2013 Human Rights Report from the US Department of State.
On the contrary, from freedom of the press to the freedom of non-violent assembly, from arbitrary arrests and long detention periods to police brutality, there are areas where the rights situation in Turkey has deteriorated over the last year, according to the critical report, released February 27.
As one can imagine, on top of the usual violations in the country’s predominantly Kurdish regions, this year, the Gezi protests and the government’s use of its police force to suppress them received special emphasis.
In addition to that, in this year’s report there is a new chapter. A new section on “human rights violations” in Turkey has been added. According to the US Department of State, corruption in the country has led to what the report calls a “violation of human rights.”
The title of the report's Section 4 is “Corruption and Lack of Transparency in Government.” The section begins with the sentence, “While the law provides criminal penalties for official corruption, the government did not implement the law effectively, and some officials engaged in corrupt practices with impunity.”

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