Turkey: 1298 Kurds buried in 88 mass graves

REPORT, Kurdistan National Congress, — As the Kurdish question still remains the most important problem in the country; the recommencement of armed conflict is evaluated as a serious and ominous development. Again, we state that solving this problem in a peaceful and democratic way becomes obligatory. One of the main reasons why the problem has never reached the point of being resolved or addressed is that the state, whilst recognizing the Kurdish question legally in 2009, has not taken any further steps to solve the problem.

 There are several reasons that explain why the process has been frustrated and reached the point that it has: the local election results of 2009 have not been analysed in political terms; the penal legislation is full of prohibitions and limitations in terms of working politically (especially in terms of freedom of expression); the state has not declared its road map about the Kurdish Initiative policy; it could not establish the matter of correct ‘addressee’; it did not legislate or pass any laws relating to human rights or establish the human rights institutions which were mentioned at the start of the process; it has not permanently solved problems relating to children who are in conflict with the law; it has not abolished the special competent and incumbent courts which are a continuation of the State Security Courts (DGM); heavy violation of rights have still occurred in prisons; members of the Peace Group have been arrested and subjugated to inhumane treatment; it has turned a blind eye to subjects related to the Kurdish Initiative in the Change Proposal for the Constitution and shows no willingness to heal the wounds of the past, etc. At this point, the government has taken no steps that aim to shed light on the thousands of enforced disappearances that have taken place. At the height of the conflict during the 1990’s, thousands of people disappeared. Their families have met a wall of silence in their struggle to find out what happened to loved ones. To tackle this issue today can put Turkey on the road to reconciliation and achieving justice, to a peaceful solution for the Kurdish issue and for democracy.

 

THE DARK LEGACY CONTINUES TO REMAIN AN OPEN WOUND IN TURKEY

The dark events regarding enforced disappearances in Kurdistan since the 1990’s are coming to the forefront of discussions and public attention. At that time, while human rights defenders, press members and politicians who were bringing this issue to the public’s attention and demanding that it be researched were being exposed to attacks and lawsuits, no procedures were being carried out against members implicated in such events (soldiers, village guards or JİTEM – the Gendarmerie Intelligence and Counter-terrorism Unit), and if anyone did anything about it, they were obstructed in short order. In reality, during that dark period, everyone knew that people were being executed after being detained, but they remained silent. The inability of people who had been killed in the mountains to be identified by their spouses without fear, displayed the extent of the terror and fear that was created in those days.

Sevket Akdemir, the regional representative of the Association of Human Rights (IHD) that denounced this “nightmare” from the 1990’s when more than 4,000 Kurdish villages were destroyed, has stressed the manner in which the impunity of security forces has weakened the confidence of citizens in the law: “The most moving events to the conscience of the company were missing, murders were not solved, extra-judicial executions and mass graves” have been the consequence and result, he said.

Emma Sinclair Webb of the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch says the disappearances were part of a state policy to terrorize the local civilian population. “In the early 1990’s, there was a policy of rounding of hundreds and thousands of civilians, and giving no proper trial or judicial process, but rather taking them in, threatening them, torturing them. There was systematic torture throughout that period, and a lot of others simply were not heard of again and in that region, thousands disappeared or bodies were found too at the time, but not identified and there was no attempt to discover how the killings took place and who by. So there is massive legacy and impunity. For the past abuses, for the disappearances and killings”, Webb explains.

Turkey has been committing serious crimes against humanity in the Kurdish regions for the last 30 years. This has been proved once more after recent excavations of mass graves in the Mutki district of Bitlis province, where human bones were discovered. The Turkish government has been refusing to investigate unsolved political murders conducted from the 1990’s. Regardless of many complaints filed by the relatives of those forcibly disappeared and the confessions of clandestine intelligence and witnesses of these crimes, the Turkish government remains silent. Moreover, it has been trying to cover up the evidence. The perpetrators of these crimes are known to the government but it continues to fail in its commitment to comply with the Human Rights Convention by not investigating these matters.

Turkey knew of the presence of mass graves in 1989, a Kurdish journalist, Gunay Aslan, has revealed. Kasaplar Deresi (Butcher’s Creek), a place of discharge/refuse from the army in the province of Siirt, was the first mass grave discovered in which nine people were exhumed by the authorities, but the names of at least 73 others buried in this mass grave came to light. The guerrillas (killed in clashes) or people abducted by the security forces had been thrown here, sometimes from garbage vehicles. More than 100 bodies found in this mass grave were exhumed over the past 20 years.

These are not isolated, unrelated events. At least 31 mass graves have been discovered by human rights organizations and the inhabitants of the Kurdish region. Two mass graves were discovered in September 2010 in Diyarbakir, capital of the Kurdish region, where clothing and bones of PKK members had been found. According to eyewitnesses, the bodies were burned and abandoned by the army after heavy fighting near Zera, a village in the region of Diyarbakir. But justice has not yet been achieved for the dead.

The Association of Human Rights in Turkey claims to have been informed of the existence of more than 100 mass graves in Bitlis province, populated mainly by Kurds. The Kurdish media is trying to raise awareness and articulate the concerns of families of missing by reporting upon new revelations about mass graves and the evidence of the “war room”. Each story testifies to the atrocities of the Turkish army in the 1990’s. Testimonies from villagers and PKK guerrillas have revealed the locations of mass graves, in particular, in the cities of Bitlis, Siirt, Hakkari, Sirnak, Diyarbakir, Batman and Bingol. Extrajudicial, summary executions, bodies burned, mutilated or crushed by tanks, severed heads, fighters and villagers thrown from helicopters or signs of torture and chemical weapons are listed as crimes against humanity and war by the witnesses. But the Turkish authorities and the media do not always come out of their silence.

IHD reports that mass graves are located in Newala Qasaba, Eruh town centre, Twan, Þawiran, Çevirimtepe (Girdika), Ergüven (Baluka), Kikan, Yeþilkonak (Kadîya), Kurtalan, Harat, Ekmekçiler (Binêve), Gözpýnar, Yelkesen (Basixrê) and Bozatlý (Basnê) village countryside in Siirt, Hizan, Arsan River (Newala Warê Hiro), Kokarsu (Arpêt), Býndaki mountain, the countryside of Tatvan, Çakalsöðüt (Xaþtax), between Hora Þêxan and Hora Kurmanca, Cengiz Village, Pýhok, Duav Pasture, Güroymak, Mutki and Dikilitaþ zone in Bitlis. There are also 19 graveyards in different locations in Diyarbakýr, 9 in Van, 8 in Batman, 6 in Hakkari, 5 in Bingöl, 4 in Þýrnak, 4 in Mardin and 1 each in Elazýð, Aðrý, Iðdýr and Gaziantep.

The Human Rights Association (IHD) – Diyarbakýr Branch reported on February 2nd 2011 at its press conference in Diyarbakir that 469 corpses had been secretly buried in 114 mass graves in Turkey since 1989. Over the past years, authorities have unearthed 171 corpses from 26 mass graves.

Reyhan Yalçındağ, a lawyer and member of the IHD Honour Committee who witnessed the excavation of the mass graves, emphasized the physical and psychological consequences of the three-decade long war in the Region: “Turkey has violated all kinds of national and international rules and agreements during the war. The United Nations’ Declaration on Enforced Disappearances and the European Human Rights Convention 1998 were also violated by Turkey during this war. All files of trials conducted regarding the mass graves are kept secret. This confidentiality, which also violates due process of law, prevents the victims from seeking justice”, Yalçındağ said. “Is the government trying to avoid punishing those guilty because the crimes were committed by state officials?”, she asked.

This balance sheet was prepared in February 2011 by the Documentation Unit of IHD headquarters, based upon data received through applications to IHD and reports of the Human Rights Investigation and Research Commission, established by IHD branches:

CITY	YEAR		NUMBER OF THE MASS GRAVES		NUMBER OF THE CIVILIANS- GUERRILLAS
SIIRT	1989- 1999		15 Mass Graves		5 Civilians – 201 PKK Guerrillas
BITLIS	1994- 1999		13 Mass Graves		30 Civilians – 221 PKK Guerrillas
DIYARBAKIR	1992- 1999		19 Mass Graves		10 Civilians – 206 PKK Guerrillas
VAN	1993- 1999		9 Mass Graves		149 PKK Guerrillas
BATMAN	1993-1999		8 Mass Graves		2 Civilians – 100 PKK Guerrillas (6 women- 11 no-armed)
HAKKARI	1993-1999		6 Mass Graves		2 Civilians – 54 PKK Guerrillas- 12 Village Guards
BINGOL	1996-2000		5 Mass Graves		4 Civilians – 53 PKK Guerrillas
SIRNAK	1994-		4 Mass Graves		80 Civilians (6 babies) -Tens of PKK Guerrillas (in BOTAS wells)
MARDIN	1990-		4 Mass Graves		3 Civilians – 35 PKK Guerrillas
ELAZIG	1993-2010		1 Mass Grave		50 PKK Guerrillas
AGRI	1989-1994		1 Mass Grave		5 Civilians- 36 PKK Guerrillas
DERSIM	1997-		1 Mass Grave		19 PKK Guerrillas
IGDIR	1994-		1 Mass Grave		16 PKK Guerrillas (4 women)
GAZIANTEP	1994-		1 Mass Grave		10 PKK Guerrillas
TOTAL		88 MASS GRAVES		1298 PEOPLE (136 Civilians, 1150 PKK Guerrillas, 12 village guards)
MASS GRAVES OPENED IN TURKEY
DATE OF OPENING		NUMBER OF THE GRAVES		NUMBER OF THE BODIES FOUND
1989-2010	2003-2010		26 Mass Graves		171 People (89 Civilians, 82 PKK Guerrillas )

 

There has been a deafening silence from the Turkish state with regard to the discovery of graves. The Kurds have been in the streets for several weeks to break the silence of the Turkish government and the European Union surrounding the recent discovery of mass graves. Since January, thousands of Kurds have been in the streets of Bitlis, Diyarbakir, Siirt, Mardin, Hakkari and Batman, but also in the major cities like Istanbul, Izmir, Mersin and Adana, in protest against the silence of the Turkish government and the international community. The BDP, the main Kurdish party, and associations for human rights such as the IHD and TIHV are demanding the creation of a commission of truth and justice in order to uncover all the atrocities experienced in this country. The associations representing the relatives who lost their loved ones in Mesopotamia (MEYA-DER) and Göç-Der, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), the Human Rights Association (IHD) and many NGO’s, chambers and women rights organizations have led the marches and held press conferences.

The debate about mass graves is particularly intense following the discovery of a mass grave containing the bones of at least 12 people on 5th January at Mutki, a city of the province of Bitlis, in connection with an investigation of the fate of 38 Kurds who have been missing for many years. Dozens of mass graves have been found by villagers since its discovery.

Despite requests from human rights organisations and the families of the missing for over two weeks, the prosecutor of Mutki, Cetin Kucet, is refusing to order the exhumation of one body in the presence of lawyers and human rights representatives. Hasan Ceylan, the representative of the Association of Human Rights (IHD) in Bitlis, denounced the refusal as an “arbitrary” decision by the prosecutor who had blocked the process of exhumation. Leaving the defenders of human rights outside the area, excavations were carried out by village guards, armed and paid by the government in Ankara against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), according to Ceylon. “We found that and the prosecutor does not want us on the place”, he said.

One of the mass graves was found near a gendarmerie station in the eastern province of Bitlis’ Mutki district. This is prime evidence of the complicity between the army and the Turkish government.

Atilla Kiyat, retired Vice Admiral said: “The unsolved political killings (Faili meçhul in Turkish) were a state policy between the years 1993 and 1997”.

Former JİTEM member Yıldırım Beğler stated that about 200 bodies are buried in a region which they have pretended is mined. Beğler, known as the General Staff translator, and who currently resides in Norway, told journalists that in the context of “unsolved” murders, many people were killed by torture; most of the bodies were burned in the boiler room of the Gendarmerie 2nd Border Division or thrown from helicopters. About 200 bodies were apparently dropped in the region of the Hezil stream. He said: “Hezil Çayı is close to the Habur border crossing. The bridges no. 47 and 48 are in this region. Bridge no. 47 is used for entering Turkey form Iraq, the 48th bridge serves the opposite direction from Turkey to Iraq. Hundreds of executed people were thrown into the river between the two bridges within the boundaries of the 2nd Division, tied up to stones or other heavy objects. This is the largest area where executed bodies were buried. People think it is a mined region, but it is clear of mines. The region in a radius of 500-1000 metres around the 48th bridge between the Hezil stream and the Aktepe military zone is called ‘fire area’. We cleared the mines in this region and pretended that it was still a mined area. There is a stream here; it might be a side arm of the Hezil stream. 20-30 metres beyond the end of the stream, 80-90 people are buried”.

Şırnak Bar Association President Nuşirevan Elçi clarified that an application was made to the Diyarbakır special authority prosecution on 28th December upon Beğler’s statement but the beginning of the procedure was delayed due to the weekend and New Year’s Eve.

Foundation for Research on Society and Law (TOHAV) lawyer Yasar Aydin stated: “It is very clear that the state did not take its responsibility for finding the disappeared people”.

The President of the Association for Solidarity and Support of Relatives of Disappeared People (YAKAY-DER), Cemal Bektas, made the following announcement in yesterday’s press conference: “From the early 1990’s until the end of that decade, we saw many people disappearing or being murdered. We founded our association in 2001 and received many applications. We have filed criminal complaints and until the present day, we have opened almost 1,500 court cases. However, the court decided for lack of jurisdiction or authority for every single one of them”.

With the excavations, the long-term struggle of the relatives of the disappeared people has come to an important point. The excavations are not done properly, the correct methods are not being applied, the violation continues…

TIHV president, Sebnem Korur Fincanci, states: “We have to work hard for this project and we need need independent laboratories. The Forensic Medicine Institute is connected to the Ministry of Justice and it is not unbiased. It cannot take neutral decisions on crimes allegedly committed by the state”.

Turkey must face up to what happened during the conflict. Prime Minister R. Tayyip Erdoðan should reveal the officers responsible for this, otherwise he will be considered as complicit in this brutality. As we have seen, the PM sheds tears for everyone but Kurds. We expect his tears for our people. If he will not share our pain, no one expects us to trust the government as well as the state.

The discovery of these latest mass graves led to thousands of Kurds protesting against what they say is the government’s silence over this issue. For years, the main Kurdish party has called for an investigation into the disappearances, but the authorities have dismissed this demand as ‘terrorist propaganda’. That is, until now.

IHD has announced that: “We want them to be investigated as a group by a truth research commission. We, as the Human Rights Association, are prepared to serve in a commission and share the information we have. The time has come to face the past. The trust felt by the relatives of the disappeared in the state and justice has been bruised in a very serious way. The right to life is sacred and untouchable. We want the graves of the thousands of people disappeared in the region between 1990 and 2000 to be located at once. We demand that those who drowned people in wells without batting an eye, and those who shot to death and later burned people, are tried immediately”.

Richard Howitt, the spokesman for the European Parliament’s committee on Turkey, says the government has to change its attitude: “There is still, amongst the ruling class, a heavy defensiveness against Kurdish rights in Ankara”.

The mounting pressure on the government does appear to be having an effect. Last weekend, the Turkish Prime Minster Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with mothers of the disappeared in a highly publicized event. He promised to look into their individual cases, but refused calls for a parliamentary investigation.

It is obvious that there will be no peaceful solution until all the mass graves are excavated and that those responsible for these crimes are tried. But the Turkish state and AKP government has no intention of investigating the crimes of the past and solving the Kurdish Question.

The ruling AK party has so far rejected all kinds of calls. But pressure is also growing from the EU, which Turkey is seeking to join.

 

THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY

In United Nations General Assembly resolution 61/177 of 20 December 2006 – the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance – regulations concerning enforced disappearances are made clear. However, the convention concerning enforced disappearances states the following clearly:

Article 1: (second clause) No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for enforced disappearance.

Article 2: For the purposes of this Convention, “enforced disappearance” is considered to be the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law.

As this convention was being ratified, results of DNA tests reveal that peoples detained in front of witnesses in the Lice and Kulp (and some more) districts in 1990’s were being executed and disposed of by the state while under detention.

Hence, we would like our concern to be raised via the European State’s bilateral relationship with Turkey. By cooperating with the Turkish state, Europe is calling its own standards of adherence to human rights into question. We believe that the ideals of democracy and free speech on which the European Union was founded are not exclusive, and Kurds will not be deterred in their struggle for these rights. It should reinforce the international mechanisms for the protection of human rights which have the competence to deal with the cases of enforced disappearances, notably the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.

Therefore, we urge the EU as a matter of urgency to stop standing by whilst Turkey denies and rejects investigations into these inhumane murders. Also, we urge the EU to exert pressure on the Turkish State to proceed immediately in shedding light upon these mass graves in Kurdish regions and all others forcibly disappeared in Turkey and to take necessary actions against their perpetrators. We demand that the UN and EU apply trade sanctions as a tool to increase political pressure on Turkey.

CONLUSION STEPS SHOULD BE TAKEN BY THE AKP GOVERNMENT

1. An independent delegation should be formed to identify the number of disappeared people and their stories. Turkish military and police archives should be opened, and mass graves and graveyards of the disappeared should be found and opened.
2. A truth commission should be set up by parliament, on a non-party basis. It should investigate unsolved political killings and cases involving missing persons that have occurred since Turkey’s military coup in 1980.
3. Forensic Medical Institutes should open their records, and the DNA test applications of relatives of disappeared people should be accepted. Military and police records should also be published, and a War Crimes Tribunal should be formed in order to try those responsible for the disappearances.
4. Relatives of missing persons should be compensated for their material and psychological loss. Those who attacked and burned down villages and those who ordered these attacks should be identified and punished.
5. The fate of people who disappeared in detention or were buried in mass graves needs to become known. Those ordering and carrying out murders must be punished.
6. Disclosures from the Ergenekon file have brought to light several “state secrets”, i.e. crimes. They must become court cases.
7. The state of the Turkish Republic must recognize officially the responsibility of the State in the enforced disappearances and apologize to families publicly.
8. The state must accept the Statement on the Protection against Enforced Disappearances, accepted by the United Nations’ general assembly on 18 December 1992, as domestic law.
9. Police custody should be abolished; rather, people taken in by the police should be brought to a judge directly.

10.  Those persons who are arbitrarily detained should be released and the harassment against human rights defenders should be stopped;

11.  Immediately, an independent programme of exhumation and identification of the bodies should take place and they should be given back to their families, and a programme to help families find mass graves, particularly in the Kurdish provinces, should be started.

12.  A centralized data base of the genetic information of the families of the disappeared and of the bodies should be established, and a DNA bank to identify the bones unearthed from mass graves should be established.

13.  Prosecutions, in order to establish the individual’s responsibility and to sanction the authors of enforced disappearances, should be started.

14.  The Turkish state should sign and ratify the International Convention for the Protection of all persons from Enforced Disappearances and recognize the competence of the Committee against Enforced Disappearances to receive individual complaints.

15.  Secret detentions within the framework of counter-terrorism should be to put an end.

16.  Dialogue with the associations of the families of the disappeared should begin or continue, in order to have an integral solution to the disappeared issue.

17.  It should facilitate the research – and the establishment – of Truth with the protection of the mass graves.

18.  The rights of the relatives and of Human Rights defenders – particularly their right to freedom of association, of expression and of demonstration – should be respected.

19.  Immunity of anyone responsible – generals, police officers and politicians on duty during the period of 1991 and 1996 – should be removed.