Amnesty as Counterterrorism Policy: An Evaluation of the Turkish Amnesty Law of 2003 (From Understanding Terrorism: Analysis of Sociological and Psychological Aspects, P 179-189, 2007, Suleyman Ozeren, Ismail Dincer Gunes, et al., eds. -- See NCJ-225410)

• NCJ Number: 225426
• Author(s): Zeliha Ozdogan; Ali Ozdogan
• Date Published: 2007
• Length: 11 pages
• Sale Source: IOS Press
• Publication Format: Book Chapter
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: Netherlands

Annotation

This study evaluated the impact of the Turkish National Amnesty Law of 2003, which granted amnesty to nonviolent terrorists and promised pardon for violent terrorists who cooperated with law enforcement authorities.

Abstract

Although the intent of the law was to decrease terrorism, after 10 months the law was found to have no significant effect on the number of armed and unarmed terrorist incidents or the number of deaths and injuries from terrorist attacks. Three explanations are offered for the law’s failure to reduce the number and effect of terrorist attacks. First, terrorist organizations intimidated their members to keep them from applying for the amnesty; and in showing the ineffectiveness of the law, terrorist organizations may have escalated their attacks during the period following the law’s enactment. Second, those who responded to the amnesty were disproportionately from the terrorist organizations that had been inactive for many years. Third, the 10-month period may not have been a sufficient period of time for assessing the impact of the law. The monthly data were obtained for the number of armed and unarmed incidents as well as the number of deaths and injuries for three time periods: 10 months before the intervention, 6 months during the intervention, and 10 months after the intervention. The study applied Generalized Least Square in cross-sectional multiple time series analysis. 2 tables and 14 references