Turkey’s military and police forces have killed hundreds of people during operations against Kurdish rebels in southeastern Turkey, the United Nations said on Friday in a report that listed summary killings, torture, rape and widespread destruction of property among an array of human rights abuses.
The report, by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, details how operations by the Turkish infantry, artillery, tanks and possibly aircraft drove up to half a million people from their homes over a 17-month period from July 2015 to the end of 2016.
Though the report is focused on the conduct of security forces in southeastern Turkey, the 25-page document underscores the deepening alarm of the United Nations over the measures ordered by Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, since a failed coup attempt last July.
The state of emergency Mr. Erdogan imposed after the coup attempt appeared to “target criticism, not terrorism,” Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, said here on Tuesday.
The Turkish government declined to comment on the report.
Critics of Mr. Erdogan charge that he called off a truce with the Kurds in 2015 to stoke nationalist sentiments after his party fared poorly in parliamentary elections. After the failed coup, he used his enhanced emergency powers to crack down on Kurdish political leaders, intellectuals and others who voiced support for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., which is considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.
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