History of Human Rights Association (IHD)

Human Rights Association is a non-governmental and voluntary organization, founded on 17 July 1986, in a dark period because of the military coup that had been conducted on 12 September 1980 in Turkey. After the military coup, in fact, there were so many violations against fundamental human rights-freedoms: torture was practised in police custodies and prisons intensified; deaths were increasingly; political parties, associations and trade unions were banned and their executives were put into prison.
 
Today Human Rights Association fights for the protection of life right, the abolition of death penalty, the finding of disappeared person, the prevention of execution. Furthermore, it carries out an important struggle against torture and, within the frameworks of its activities, it has founded the "Turkish Human Rights Foundation" (HRFT) for treatment and rehabilitation of torture victims.
 
Human Rights Association focused also on the Kurdish problem and regards this question as one of the basic democracy and human rights problems in Turkey. Howewer, IHD believes that not only Kurdish problem, but also the other language, religion, ethnic and cultural differences can be solved by means of pluralism principle of democracy.