Deputy suggests new panel for coup victims

ANKARA - Anatolia News Agency

Nimet Baş, the head of the Parliamentary Commission to Investigate Military Coups, says the panel received so many applications from coup victims. AA photo

A new parliamentary commission should be formed to investigate coup victims’ cases deeply, according to Nimet Baş, the head of the Parliamentary Commission to Investigate Military Coups.

The commission left a significant archive but because it mostly focused on the cause and effects of the military interventions in Turkish democracy they could not pay enough attention to the case of coup victims, Baş told Anatolia news agency. During her evaluation of the parliamentary application to cancel late Turkish Prime Minister Adnan Menderes’ capital sentence and restore his honor, Baş said all victims of military coups should be protected by the same framework.

“Before we started our work, we got together and discussed the topics we should be researching. We determined our chief concern as the causes and effects of the military coups. And we could only mention coup victims briefly, because we did not have enough time. Therefore I think it would be very useful to form a new commission that will carry out a detailed investigation into the cases of all coup victims without singling out anyone due to his high rank in public service.”

She said they had received so many applications from coup victims who were either physically tortured or forced out of their jobs that the coup victims’ case was on no account a small file. “With the current commission we just pushed one door ajar. We need to do more in looking well into the room. The parliamentary commission has left behind a comprehensive archive that not only will have uses for state administration but also for academic researchers. However, if we could not raise public awareness about how detrimental such military interventions into public administration are, all our work becomes rubbish.”

Baş said some part of society still thought the Sept. 12 military coup was a something to be grateful for, which was exactly the kind of thinking aimed at by the coup stagers.

“Perhaps it is because of a successful psychological war or of a public illusion, but makers of the military coups have been against society, not on their side,” she said.