JEDDAH: Turkey is set to give extensive powers to neighborhood night watchmen to maintain public safety.
The move has stirred controversy over fears it might create an “unqualified” alternative police force with uncontrolled authority.
The use of night watchmen as armed, low-ranking police, known as bekçi in Turkish, has been in effect for decades, but their numbers and authority have risen since 2016’s failed coup as part of ever-increasing security measures.
In the past, watchmen were only assigned in southeastern Turkey, in the conflict zone between Turkish forces and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Currently there are about 30,000 throughout the country. They are only required to have completed a middle school education in order to qualify for the post.
The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) recently submitted a draft bill to Turkey’s Parliament, granting night watchmen new powers to seek identification from people (including tourists), to possess firearms, raid houses, conduct body searches and detain people.
The bill is expected to be debated and voted on next week.
Although police forces are required to have “reasonable suspicion” to justify body searches, the current bill does not necessitate any criteria for watchmen, who do not benefit from the same professional training as police officers.
Queries have been raised over the jurisdiction of night watchmen, as well as the idea of unqualified individuals having the right to conduct body searches of women.
Emma Sinclair-Webb, director of Human Rights Watch Turkey, said the obvious concern was that equipping poorly trained night watchmen with extra powers to conduct identity checks and use firearms would result in abuse of those powers.
“What will be the oversight mechanisms to prevent such abuses being committed, and to discipline abusers? Weak and nontransparent oversight mechanisms are as much a concern as the actual powers the new law brings,” she told Arab News.
Human Rights Watch has documented examples of lack of oversight and lack of accountability for abuses committed by night watchmen in the past.
“I fear that we may be faced with a similar situation with night watchmen becoming an unaccountable force in big cities,” Sinclair-Webb said.
The watchmen will receive a five-month-long vocational training program, during which they will also learn how to use firearms.
They are mostly selected from the civilian population loyal to the AKP, and there is a growing concern that it might be used as a local militia against dissidents.
Former AKP lawmaker Mustafa Yeneroglu criticized the proposed bill, and said that such authority would result in severe human rights violations.
Turkey empowers night watchmen in the streets, but for what?
https://arab.news/c47cs
Turkey empowers night watchmen in the streets, but for what?
- Queries have been raised over the jurisdiction of night watchmen, as well as the idea of unqualified individuals having the right to conduct body searches of women
Survival in Gaza ‘on the edge,’ living conditions ‘brutal’ despite easing of hunger, UN officials warn
- ‘The situation remains extremely precarious … Having an entire population living on the brink is just not acceptable,’ says UNICEF deputy executive director
- ‘Hundreds of thousands of people are shivering in fabric tents that don’t keep the heat in or the rain out,’ adds World Food Programme deputy executive director
NEW YORK CITY: Survival in Gaza remains “on the edge” and the conditions there are “extremely brutal,” senior UN officials said on Monday, despite some easing of the situation compared with last year.
They warned that the entire population of the battered enclave is living on the brink, in what they described as an unacceptable situation. Urgent decisions are needed to ensure humanitarian access remains open, and to prevent fragile gains from being reversed they added.
“The situation remains extremely precarious, with survival at the edge,” the deputy executive director of UNICEF, Ted Chaiban, told reporters after returning from a visit to Gaza and the West Bank.
“Having an entire population living on the brink is just not acceptable.”
Carl Skau, the World Food Programme’s deputy executive director, who accompanied Chaiban on the visit, said the living conditions for hundreds of thousands of displaced people were “just brutal,” with families sheltering in flimsy tents or heavily damaged buildings in Gaza as winter storms batter the territory.
“Hundreds of thousands of people are shivering in fabric tents that don’t keep the heat in or the rain out,” Skau said.
“I met a woman, who had given birth just 10 days earlier, sitting on a wet mattress in a cold tent on the beach. It was absolutely brutal.”
Both officials said the situation had improved compared with a year ago, when Gaza was on the brink of famine, but stressed that the gains were fragile and could easily be reversed.
“The ceasefire has allowed us to rein in famine,” Skau said. “Most people I spoke to were eating at least once a day. But there is still a very long way to go. The situation is extremely fragile.”
Chaiban said that more aid and commercial goods were entering Gaza and the availability of food had improved, but he warned that the humanitarian crisis remained deadly, for children in particular.
“More than 100 children have been reported killed since the ceasefire,” he said, adding that about 100,000 youngsters are still acutely malnourished and require long-term care.
About 1.3 million people, many of them children, still lack proper shelter, Chaiban added, as families continue to live in flimsy tents or bombed-out buildings, exposed to heavy rain, strong winds and freezing temperatures.
At least 10 children reportedly have died of hypothermia since winter began.
“It really is miserable in those tents,” Chaiban said.
Skau said hundreds of thousands of people remain displaced, unable to return to homes that had been reduced to rubble, and struggling to survive with little protection from the elements.
“I spoke to a woman who had lost her husband, most of her relatives and her home,” he said. “She was left with four children and absolutely nothing.”
Both officials highlighted moments of resilience amid the devastation, including children who had returned to learning and families who were attempting to rebuild fragments of normal life, but said such signs of hope should not obscure the sheer scale of the ongoing suffering.
“The gains we’ve made can easily be reversed,” Skau said. “So much more needs to be done now.”
Both of the officials said further progress would depend on the continuation of the ceasefire agreement and predictable humanitarian access, including the opening and sustained operation of multiple border crossings, and routes into and within Gaza. Aid workers need safe conditions in which to operate at scale, they added.
Shelter remains the most urgent need as winter storms continue; Skau said the immediate priority was to “flood the strip with shelter,” while Chaiban said decisions were urgently needed to ensure access for essential supplies and to restore basic services.
The coming weeks will be critical, Chaiban said, adding: “We have a window to change the trajectory for children in Gaza. We can’t waste it.”
