in the information supplied by the author during his three interviews with asylum officers. Those contradictions
concerned, inter alia, the author's profession, the request he had received to make shoes for the PKK and the
arrests to which he had been subjected in 1994. The author provides the Committee with detailed explanations
designed to demonstrate that there are no such contradictions and that he has told the truth about the reasons
that motivated his departure from the country.
2.5
The author provided the Committee with a document issued by the prosecutor of Gaziantep, dated 28
March 1995, indicating that he was wanted by the police. The document was considered by the Swiss
authorities as a fake. The author disagrees with that conclusion and complains that, contrary to the usual
practice, the Swiss authorities never asked the Swiss Embassy in Ankara to verify the authenticity of the
document.
The complaint
3.1
The author claims that his forcible return to Turkey would constitute a violation of Switzerland's
obligations under the Convention, since in view of the reasons that motivated his departure from Turkey, there
are substantial grounds to believe that he would risk imprisonment, torture and even extrajudicial killing upon
return.
The State party's observations on the admissibility and merits of the communication
4.1
The State party did not contest the admissibility of the communication and made observations on its
merits in a letter dated 13 August 1998.
4.2
The State party informs the Committee of the discrepancies which the authorities have found to exist
during their interviews with the author. The State party notes, for example, that his account of the order for
mountain shoes for PKK soldiers is strewn with contradictions and inconsistencies. These relate to an essential
point of the communication, namely, the grounds for the persecution to which the author was allegedly
subjected by the authorities of his country. The State party also considers that the statements by the author
regarding the circumstances in which he allegedly received the order for shoes cannot be reconciled with the
situation with which members of the PKK are faced. It does seem surprising, at the very least, that a member
of a terrorist movement, at war with the current regime, which has mobilized the main forces of the country
against it, would arrive one day at the home of strangers and ask them to support the armed struggle, in broad
daylight and without taking the slightest precaution. To accept the author's version would be to ignore that the
PKK must have instituted a whole system of security measures, such as strategies for identifying its members,
in order to safeguard their lives so as to continue the armed struggle. In this regard, it is interesting to note that,
by the author's own account, it is well known that the secret police and its informers are present in all areas of
civil society. A genuine PKK member could not be ignorant of this fact and would not have rashly exposed
himself to danger as the author claims.
4.3
The State party finds it astonishing that an individual suspected by the police in August 1994 of having
given support to the PKK should spontaneously accept, at the beginning of 1995, a stranger's suggestion that
he should produce shoes for the movement, without for a second imagining that the security services might
have been trying in this way to confirm their suspicions about him.
4.4
The State party also contests the reality of the proceedings instituted by the police against the author.
The author stated that his father had also made shoes for the PKK; however, the father was never subjected to
any criminal prosecution for participation in terrorist activity, but was only arrested and interrogated with regard
to his son. The leniency shown by the Turkish authorities to the author's father is completely inexplicable.
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