Disabled people in Turkey say little progress has been made in implementing disability rights law

From Today's Zaman:

On the occasion of the international Week of Disabled Persons, disabled people in Turkey have stressed that although several years have passed since the ratification of a special law ensuring their rights, there has been little progress in its implementation. Turhan İçli, head of the Turkish Handicapped Confederation, says rights accorded to disabled persons under a reform law in 2005 have remained on paper due to poor implementation.

The Handicapped Confederation organized a march to Parliament on May 11 to draw attention to their problems. According to the Prime Ministry Administration for Persons with Disabilities, 12.29 percent of Turkey’s population is disabled, 1.25 percent is orthopedically impaired, 0.37 percent is visually impaired and 0.48 is mental impaired. The 2005 reform law was aimed at guaranteeing the rights of the disabled and ensuring their ability to participate in social and economic life.

The law called for the removal of all architectural obstacles to mobility for the handicapped by the year 2012, prohibited discrimination on the basis of disabilities and attempted to enable the creation of new employment opportunities for disabled persons. It is also set aside state support for the education of disabled persons and instituted tax exemptions on equipment they need to accommodate their handicaps. “The law was very nice, but based on the implementation it seems it was made just to fulfill the requirements of the social state on paper. After the law was passed, new regulations were issued that made our lives difficult,” said Şükrü Boyraz, chairman of the Association of Turkish Disabled Persons.

Boyraz said the law guaranteed many social and economic rights for the disabled, but that there have been changes in regulations defining disabilities. “For example, after these amendments on disability reporting, a handicapped person who was previously considered 60 percent handicapped was defined as 30 percent handicapped. But in order to benefit from these social and economic benefits, one has to be at least 40 percent handicapped. This means that people with one eye, one leg or one arm are now out of the system,” Boyraz explained.

He added that aid provided by the state is limited and made contingent on the economic situation of the family. “For example, the state pays TL 500 to families if they are taking care of family members who need special care. But only families with a monthly per capita income below TL 300 receive these benefits. So in a three-person family, if the income is TL 1,000 they are not entitled benefit from this allowance because their per capita income is higher than TL 300. But the state does its calculations forgetting the fact that this family is paying rent and maybe also having to cover education expenses,” Boyraz said.

He also noted that the reform law called for all kinds of architectural changes to make life easier for handicapped people by the year 2012, but said the law did not indicate what would happen if these changes are made. “Now almost three years have passed and there have been no serious changes. We are still unable to go outside,” he said.

Öztürk Türdoğan, chairman of the Human Rights Association (İHD), acknowledged that there have been some positive developments for disabled persons, such as social aid and training, but stressed that the current level of implementation of the reform law is inadequate. “The state is acting in a way that says, ‘Yes, we have to give you some social benefits, but our concern is not to actually live with you, but to keep you where you are,’” he argued.

But Abdullah Güven, president of the Prime Ministry’s Administration for Persons with Disabilities, said such criticisms are unfair: “The number of disabled persons who were getting training was previously 19,000; now it is 207,000. Four-hundred thousand people are receiving aid and 156,000 families are getting support for taking care of disabled persons. We are not saying that we are doing everything, but we started from almost nothing. We will continue our project with determination to help disabled citizens participate in economic and social life,” Güven underlined.

He added that there is nothing wrong with the law or with the relevant regulations, but said sometimes there can be problems due to the misinterpretations of state officials who are implementing these regulations. He emphasized that in order to overcome this problem they are trying to train state officials about the rights of the handicapped under a project titled “Accessible Turkey.”