CHP asks for inquiry into army suicides

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

A group of lawmakers from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) asked the Parliament Speaker’s Office on Dec. 14 to open a parliamentary inquiry into the high number of suicides and controversial deaths among conscripts conducting compulsory military service.

The issue made headlines recently after Human Rights Commission head Ayhan Sefer Üstün announced last month that 175 conscripts had committed suicide over the last two and a half years, with the number reaching 934 over the last 10 years.

In their reasoning behind the inquiry, CHP lawmakers referred to statements and figures cited by the Parliament’s Human Rights Commission. In 2012 alone 43 suicides have taken place in the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK). Recently, both commissioned and non-commissioned officers have been subject to illegal surveillance and there are reports that over 200 commissioned and non-commissioned officers are currently being investigated, the CHP deputies said. They stressed that all those investigations and suicides were a result of mobbing or social and psychological reasons.