Introduction

In the last 30 years, three principal background factors have affected respect for human rights in Turkey and in particular the propensity of the state to torture: the evolution of Turkish democracy and the fortunes of Kemalist nationalism, the conflict in the Kurdish region of south-eastern Turkey, and the progress of Turkey's application to join the European Union.

At the beginning of the period under review, Turkey was still experiencing the aftermath of the military coup of 1980 that ended a period of unstable coalition governments in the 1970s. Interviewees were adamant that, while torture was far from unknown in the 1970s, it was well below the levels observed in the 1980s and 1990s.

The military stayed in power for three years, between 1980 and 1983. From 1983 to 1991 the Anavatan Partisi (Motherland Party) won successive elections. A period of coalition governments started in November 1991 and lasted until 2002, when the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (Justice and Development Party, AKP) came into power. Although the military returned to barracks in 1983, its shadow was felt for a long time in Turkish politics. The first half of the 1990s was marked by an escalation of violence between the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK) and the army. National security and suppression of Kurdish nationalism were the main objectives of successive governments. In 1999, Bulent Ecevit, the social democratic leader of the 1970s, returned to power at the head of a coalition government, inaugurating a period of more serious human rights reform. In 2002, the AKP won elections and took power, initially under the leadership of Abdullah Gul and later Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The striking characteristic of the AKP, which was still in power in 2016, after the period under study, is that it is the first political party since the formation of the Turkish Republic to break decisively with the Kemalist/ secularist consensus that had been the official ideology of the state since the 1920s, tenaciously defended above all by the military.