Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power 18 years ago pledging "" for torture. For a while, it seemed sincere. [...] Such ho… - Amberin Zaman

Reports of human rights atrocities in Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Turkey are growing, with victims speaking out on forced disappearances and murder. [...] The gutting of and the ongoing jailing of critical journalists — there were more than 80 behind bars at the last count — means that with the exception of a handful of oppositional online news sites, the abuses go unreported.

In a further ominous turn, the culture of impunity has spread beyond Turkey's borders to northern Syria, where Turkish forces occupy broad swaths of territory. Reports of ill-treatment, sexual abuse and extrajudicial killings carried out by Turkish-supervised Syrian rebels have been described as "war crimes" by the United Nations. At the same time, Turkish forces have been abducting and jailing Syrians accused of terrorist ties with little evidence to support the charges, a flagrant violation of the , rights groups say.