(Istanbul) – Police fired teargas canisters directly at protesters during the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul, turning them into dangerous projectiles that caused serious injuries, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch has documented 10 cases in which people were seriously injured, including loss of an eye, when police fired teargas canisters directly at them, often at close range. The scale and consistency of accounts of similar injuries recorded by local groups points to a clear pattern of misuse of teargas by Turkey’s police force.
The Turkish authorities should immediately issue improved guidelines on when and how teargas may be used that include a prohibition on firing teargas canisters in confined areas or directly at people. The authorities should strictly enforce the policy and hold accountable police officers who do not comply with the guidelines.
“Teargas canisters can inflict serious ‒ even life threatening ‒ wounds when fired directly at demonstrators, and that happened over and over again at Gezi Park,” said Emma Sinclair-Webb, senior Turkey researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The police and their commanders who used these canisters in such an irresponsible way should be held to account for inflicting unnecessary harm and endangering lives.”
On July 16, 2013, the European Court of Human Rights ruled (Abdullah Yaşa and Others v. Turkey application no. 44827/08) that improper firing of tear gas by Turkish police directly at protestors, injuring a 13 year old, had violated human rights, and called for stronger safeguards to minimize the risk of death and injury resulting from its use.
The policing of the Gezi protests began with the violent dispersal of peaceful demonstrators using excessive amounts of teargas and water cannon. This approach was repeated on numerous occasions and documented by Human Rights Watch. In addition to the people injured by teargas canisters and in other ways, four protesters and a police officer died from other causes in the course of the protests.
Human Rights Watch interviewed victims, witnesses, lawyers, and medical personnel about the teargas incidents. The ten documented cases are among the dozens that local medical and human rights groups recorded of people with serious head or upper body injuries caused by teargas canisters fired from launchers.
Although teargas is normally not a lethal weapon, it can cause serious medical problems for people exposed to it, even when it is used with restraint. As a riot control method, teargas should only be used where necessary as a proportionate response to quell violence.
International guidelines such as the UN Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms stipulate that the police are expected to use discretion in crowd control tactics to ensure a proportionate response to any threat of violence, and to avoid exacerbating the situation.
In addition to firing teargas canisters directly at protesters during the Gezi Park protests, police fired teargas in huge quantities into confined spaces, a hotel, a hospital, and makeshift health clinics in contravention of police guidelines. They used pepper spray on people who posed no threat and directed a water cannon at a hotel and a hospital entrance.
Police also fired plastic bullets at protesters. The Medical Association had documented 11 cases up to June 27 in which people lost an eye as a result of being hit by plastic bullets or a teargas canister. On June 19, Milliyet newspaper reported that the police had used 130,000 teargas canisters over three weeks, almost its entire supply.
Human Rights Watch obtained a copy of a circular issued on June 26 by the Interior Ministry with procedures for use of force by law enforcement authorities against unauthorized demonstrations, focusing in particular on the use of teargas. The circular includes guidelines on the need for advance direction and coordination by senior officers in the Rapid Deployment Force and Security Branch in preparing to police demonstrations. Senior officers are instructed to keep records of the volume of teargas used.
It also instructs police to warn demonstrators before firing teargas, to use water cannon before teargas, and to avoid targeting enclosed spaces, schools, hospitals, care homes, and people not participating in the demonstration. However, the circular says nothing about directly targeting protesters at close range, a major cause of the most serious teargas-related injuries during the demonstrations.
“While the circular is a step in the right direction, its major shortcoming is that it does not prohibit using teargas canisters as a weapon to injure protesters by directly firing at them,” Sinclair-Webb said.
Ahmet Şık, a Turkish journalist who covered many of the protests in Istanbul, told Human Rights Watch: “Some policemen fired the teargas canisters in a correct way, but most of them fired them directly at the protesters, often from close range.”
On June 11, a teargas canister hit Şık’s helmet, which he had used when covering Iraq as a reporter. “Were it not for the helmet I would have been in a coma now like some of the other victims ‒ in the best case scenario,” he said.
In response to Human Rights Watch inquiries, a spokesman for the police union, Emniyet-Sen, said police are trained in how to use teargas and teargas launchers and that the incorrect use of teargas during the policing of the Gezi protests “was not an issue of training but an issue of not being able to analyze the situation.”
He said that excessively long working hours, exhaustion, lack of experience, and messages from high-ranking officers and authorities contributed to abuses.
Dr. Hüseyin Demirdiken of the Turkish Medical Association told Human Rights Watch that after seeing so many injuries resulting from teargas canisters hitting people in the head and upper body, he concluded that, “the aim was not only to disperse the crowds, but also to punish.”
Throughout the Gezi Park protests, the prime minister and other senior government officials failed to encourage restraint and dialogue, or to acknowledge the right to peaceful assembly. Prime Minster Recep Tayyip Erdoğan referred to the protesters as “hooligans” (çapulcu) in speeches on June 2 and June 9. He defended the police response with such comments as, “We will not feed our police to them [the protesters]” and, “Should we have left the squares to anarchists and terrorists?”
Occasional government admissions that use of force had at times been excessive did not stop abusive policing tactics. At a speech to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) parliamentary group on June 18, Erdoğan said that the police had “passed the democracy test,” and that police powers and powers to intervene would be increased.
Turkey has a poor record on holding the police and security forces accountable for abuses, excessive use of force, torture and other ill-treatment, and unlawful killings, as Human Rights Watch has repeatedly documented.
Specifically in the context of peaceful protests, the European Court of Human Rights has on at least three occasions expressed concern about Turkish police use of harmful gases such as teargas and pepper spray. It ultimately held Turkey responsible for injuries in each case and concluded that there had been a violation of the prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment.
“Following the Gezi protests, there needs to be a full public inquiry into policing tactics, decision-making, and the chain of command ‒ reaching to the top,” Sinclair-Webb said. “Prosecuting abuses by individual junior officers will not be enough to deter the police from doing the very same thing in the future.”
