Sebnem Korur Fincanci
We feel the plight of all oppressed people in our hearts but we have failed to dress their wounds.
Dr. Sebnem Korur Fincanci is a woman human rights defender and the President of the Turkish Medical Association. She is a member and the former head of the Turkish Human Rights Foundation. She is also one of the founding members of the Forensic Doctors’ Association and has played a major role in the development of the Istanbul Protocol, which sets the United Nations reference standards on the investigation and documentation of the cases of torture. She has conducted forensic investigations, at times undercover, to expose torture in multiple countries. In 2014 she received the International Hrant Dink Award and Hessian Peace Prize in 2018.
Human rights defenders in Turkey have been subjected to harassment, threats, surveillance, violations of the rights to freedom of expression, association, and assembly, judicial harassment including criminal prosecution, violent attacks, prolonged arbitrary detention and ill-treatment. They become target for their work on denouncing impunity for serious human rights violations, defending sexual rights, investigating on ultra-nationalist networks, advocating for labour rights or defending the right to conscientious objection.
