“HAND in HAND Platform”, founded by a group of disabled victims who were forced to flee Turkey under the umbrella of ‘Human Rights Defenders (HRD)’, issued a statement on the occasion of ‘December 3rd International Day of Persons with Disabilities’.
According to the World Health Organization, there are more than one billion people with disabilities, which corresponds to 15 percent of the world’s population. Many physical disabilities are caused by poor living conditions, poverty and lack of access to health and treatment.
People with disabilities have equal rights and responsibilities as honorable members of the society in which they live. The state is obliged to provide all constitutional citizenship rights such as freedom of movement, freedom of education, freedom of work, freedom of expression, etc. to its citizens with disabilities in a way that ensures equal opportunity. It is the most natural right of people with disabilities on the basis of ‘constitutional citizenship’ to live their own lives without depending on the will, compassion or arbitrariness of others.
The biggest problem faced by physically and mentally disadvantaged individuals is not their own disability, but the barriers imposed on them by the state and society.
Policies to promote the social visibility of people with disabilities as equal individuals who have the right to live their own lives in all areas of social life, rather than being excluded from social life, forced to live in their own shells, condemned to other people’s pity, compassion or the decisions others make about them, should be continued.
Although the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities guarantees that persons with disabilities are protected from all forms of exploitation and discriminatory, injurious or degrading treatment, violations of the rights of persons with disabilities continue to increase in the increasingly authoritarian Republic of Turkey after 2016. Many persons with disabilities in Turkey have been unlawfully dismissed from their jobs by decrees with the force of law and have been condemned to starvation and social genocide as they are prevented from working in other jobs.
According to TUIK data, more than 12 million people with disabilities live in Turkey.
According to the 2017 KESK report, 2.9 percent of those dismissed are disabled or chronically ill. The number of disabled or chronically ill people dismissed is definitely over 2000 people.