The Guardian News Agency has reported that the Iranian authorities executed three Turkish nationals for drug trafficking last year only 11 days after a high-profile visit to Tehran by Turkey\u2019s president, Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, it has emerged.
\nIran \u2013 which executed nearly 1,000 people last year, more than any other country apart from China \u2013 usually refrains from sending foreign nationals to the gallows, especially in cases involving countries with which Tehran has maintained friendly relations.
\nThe family of a 46-year-old man, Faruk G\u00fcner, a father of nine children, confirmed to the Guardian that he was executed. He was a lorry driver working between Afghanistan and Turkey who passed through Iran. \u201cWe tried for four years to save him. They didn\u2019t tell us that he was going to be executed. They hanged him in the morning; we got the news in the afternoon,\u201d G\u00fcner\u2019s brother said.
\nAccording to the Guardian, the information about the executions was first received by the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR), which closely monitors Iran\u2019s use of capital punishment. The group said two other Turkish nationals, identified as Mehmet Yilmaz and Matin, whose surname is not known, were executed at the same time. Activists say drug traffickers do not usually receive a fair trial in Iran.
\nMost executions in Iran are for drug offences. As a neighbour of Afghanistan, a leading supplier of the world\u2019s drugs, Iran faces big challenges at home, with a young population susceptible to an abundance of cheap and addictive drugs. However, the alarming rate of executions has sparked a debate inside the country and parliamentarians are considering a proposal to replace the death penalty in such cases with imprisonment.
\nThe Guardian added that the three Turks were executed in April 2015, a little more than a week after Erdo\u011fan met with Iran\u2019s president, Hassan Rouhani, and the country\u2019s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Tehran.
\nThe countries, which have maintained good ties for several decades, have been at odds over regional issues in recent years and relations were frosty at the time of Erdo\u011fan\u2019s visit. However, they have since improved. Iran firmly backed Erdo\u011fan against the failed coup attempt earlier this year and Turkey is realigning itself towards Russia, Tehran\u2019s main ally.
\nG\u00fcner\u2019s brother said his family\u2019s pleas to Iranian as well as Turkish authorities fell on deaf ears. \u201cWe asked help from many places; nobody helped us,\u201d he told the Guardian via telephone. \u201cWe found a lawyer and we went to Iran; we tried to prove that he was innocent, but one day they just executed him. This is inhuman. He had nine kids.\u201d
\nThe Turkish foreign ministry did not respond to emails seeking its reaction on the news and on why it did not publicise the executions at the time.
\nThe Guardian continued, \u201cThey think that they are Muslim, but they are not. If my brother were in Israel, even in Israel, he would be alive,\u201d G\u00fcner\u2019s brother said. \u201cWe asked help from Turkish authorities; they didn\u2019t help. We couldn\u2019t even see him for the last time,\u201d the brother added. \u201cThere are no laws in Iran. If he were in another country, at least we would be able to see my brother for the last time. They just executed him without telling us. Everything happened suddenly.\u201d
\nMadyar Samienejad, who monitors the human rights situation in Iran, said more than 450 people have been put to death in the country this year. He said at least 264 of them were executed for drug offences. Iran has also been reported to have executed at least seven people who committed their crimes while they were under the age of 18 – two of those executions have been confirmed.The execution of juveniles is prohibited under international law.
\n\u201cMore than any other time, people in Iran, including those in the government and the judiciary or media, are debating whether to abolish [the] death penalty,\u201d Samienejad told the Guardian.
\n\u201cOn 26 October, [reformist newspaper] Etimad ran a front-page editorial on abolition of [the] death penalty, which talked about how ineffective this punishment has been. It\u2019s the first time this debate is taking place at such a national level and it\u2019s a positive development highlighting the work of abolitionist activists.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Guardian News Agency has reported that the Iranian authorities executed three Turkish nationals for drug trafficking last year only 11 days after a high-profile visit to Tehran by Turkey\u2019s president, Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, it has emerged. Iran \u2013 which executed nearly 1,000 people last year, more than any other country apart from China \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":1910,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[164,942,165,160,943,937,537,939,12,388,38,941,28,938,940,39],"class_list":["post-1909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-afghanistan","tag-death-penalty","tag-drugs","tag-erdogan","tag-etimad","tag-executed","tag-guardian","tag-guner","tag-iran","tag-reformist","tag-rouhani","tag-samienejad","tag-tehran","tag-turks","tag-yilmaz","tag-zarif"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1909"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1911,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1909\/revisions\/1911"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}