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Turkey: Local guards divide Turkish Kurds
5.8.2006
By Meriel Beattie , Turkey
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Southeastern Turkey,
(Kurdistan-Turkey) , -- With the mountain rain
dripping inside the collar of his ill-fitting
camouflage jacket, Sefik Tiryaki is in an
uncomfortable position.
He is a Village Guard, part of a controversial
militia force which patrols the rocky, treeless
hillsides of south-eastern Turkey.
For decades, this region has been the battle ground
in fighting between armed Kurdish separatists from
the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Turkish
military.
Over the years at least 30,000 people are thought to
have died in the conflict and hundreds of thousands
of mainly Kurdish villagers forced to abandon their
homes.
State police force
Like Sefik, most Village Guards are themselves
Kurds, armed by the state to police other Kurds. Set
up originally as a temporary militia group 22 years
ago, the Village Guards are still operating, with
more than 58,000 members.
It is a system which has long been criticised by
human rights organisations for exacerbating mistrust
and ethnic divisions in an already troubled region.
Despised as traitors by many other Kurds, the
Village Guards' relationship with the state is also
ambiguous, with a lower standard of equipment, pay
and benefits than the Turkish military or police.
"We would like more money, and we'd like to have
social security," Sefik said, cradling his ageing
Kalashnikov rifle outside his damp, windowless hut
on a mountain road.
"We are no different from civil servants, but we get
much less. We were always waiting for an
improvement, but no one has done anything so far."
Loyal to Ankara
What village guards do have, on a local level at
least - is power. And they are wary of any process -
including EU accession - which might take it away.
In his upstairs headquarters, overlooking the
mountain town of Sason, the local Village Guard
commander, Mahsum Batu sits at a polished desk
festooned with Turkish flags. On the wall beside him
is a large marble tablet engraved with the words
"Our Martyrs".
Glazed onto it are the passport size photos of some
of the 41 local Village Guards killed in service,
many in clashes with the PKK.
"During the mid 90s there were about 50 terrorists
in each region, but today, not even a bird can fly
round here without us knowing about it," Mr Batu
says. "I am not in favour of joining the EU, "he
adds.
"I would like to make it clear to them that no
terrorist organisation is ever going to get even a
small piece of this land. I took up this gun to
defend my nation, my family and my honour."
Among the tribal Kurdish communities of the
south-east, there are families, even entire villages
which, like Mr Batu, are fiercely loyal to the
Turkish state and firmly oppose any kind of Kurdish
autonomy.
Opposition
But not all Village Guards share this kind of
patriotism.
Away from the watchful gaze of anyone in uniform, a
former Village Guard, who does not want to be named,
told me what happened 13 years ago, when fighting
broke out between the military and the PKK in the
hills around his village.
"It happens because people are pressured into it,"
said the former Village Guard, who now collects
paper from city-dwellers' rubbish bins to make a
living.
"The military came and said that if we did not join
the Village Guards, then we would have to evacuate
the whole village. They would not allow our village
to remain without a Village Guard."
"I think [the system] should be abolished. It makes
everything worse. At the end of the day, Village
Guards are Kurds. And who are the others we're
fighting? They are Kurds, too."
"The Kurds have been deceived. And they're mixed up
in a conflict with other Kurds."
Over the last 20 years there have been numerous
allegations of Village Guards abusing their
position, seizing for themselves the choice
properties in evacuated villages and threatening,
even killing, Kurdish villagers who try to return.
The international organisation Human Rights Watch
has called Village Guards "a corrupt and corrupting
system".
Local obstacle
The European Commission, in a recent report on
Turkey's progress towards EU accession, has
described it as one of the major outstanding
obstacles to villagers being able to return home
safely. UN officials have also expressed concern.
"What I see is that at least Village Guards are
perceived as an obstacle, and even perceptions are
important when it comes to return" said Walter Kalin,
UN Special Rapporteur for Internally Displaced
Persons, on a trip to Turkey earlier this year.
"I think it will be important for the government to
take these fears seriously and to take the steps
necessary to remove the obstacle."
Just what the Turkish government intends to do about
the Village Guards is unclear. No new guards have
been recruited for the last six years. There have
recently been proposals for improved pay and
conditions.
But plans for a commission to oversee the disarming
and disbanding of the militia seem to have come to
nothing.
Thanks to a new compensation law, some of the
displaced Kurdish villagers are slowly starting to
return to the mountains to try to rebuild their
homes and their communities.
But many of these returnees are still resentful of
those fellow Kurds who chose to work for the state
security forces.
And without any state provision for their future,
their reintegration or their long-term safety, the
Village Guards may end up having the most to lose.
bbc co.uk
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan (
Kurdistan-Turkey) wikipedia
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