Can Başak
Department of Sociology, Koc University.
Med Anthropol Q. 2016 Sep;30(3):342-58. doi: 10.1111/maq.12259. Epub 2016 Apr 3.
State authorities invested in developing official expert discourses and practices to deny torture in post-1980 coup d'état Turkey. Documentation of torture was therefore crucial for the incipient human rights movement there in the 1980s. Human rights physicians used their expertise not only to treat torture victims but also to document torture and eventually found the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (HRFT) in 1990. Drawing on an ethnographic and archival research at the HRFT, this article examines the genealogy of anti-torture struggles in Turkey and argues that locally mediated intimacies and/or hostilities between victims of state violence, human rights physicians, and official forensics reveal the limitations of certain universal humanitarian and human rights principles. It also shows that locally mediated long-term humanitarian encounters around the question of political violence challenge forensic denial of violence and remake the legitimate levels of state violence.
1980年政变后的土耳其，国家当局投入资源发展官方专家话语和实践，以否认存在酷刑现象。因此，记录酷刑行为对于20世纪80年代初当地的人权运动至关重要。人权医生不仅运用专业知识治疗酷刑受害者，还记录酷刑情况，最终于1990年成立了土耳其人权基金会（HRFT）。本文基于对土耳其人权基金会的人种志和档案研究，审视了土耳其反酷刑斗争的谱系，并认为国家暴力受害者、人权医生和官方法医之间由地方介导的亲密关系和/或敌对状态揭示了某些普遍人道主义和人权原则的局限性。文章还表明，围绕政治暴力问题由地方介导的长期人道主义接触挑战了法医对暴力的否认，并重塑了国家暴力的合理程度。
