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Turkish military officer confirms Kurd
killings
25.8.2010
Thomas Seibert, The National UAE |
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August
25, 2010
ISTANBUL, — A
former high-ranking official in the Turkish military
has broken a long-held silence over the government’s
suspected involvement in extrajudicial killings, a
move applauded by human rights activists.
The killings are believed to be a result of the
government’s fight against the Kurdistan Workers’
Party, or PKK, a rebel group. The killings, which
rights activists estimate to be anywhere between
3,000 to 5,000 cases for the period between 1989 and
1996, when most of the executions took place, have
long been a taboo subject. Accusing security forces
of perpetrating such atrocities has been regarded as
treasonous and could result in provoking
intimidation or worse.
But this is changing. After mass graves were
unearthed in the region last year, prosecutors in
the Kurdish area have begun investigating and
building cases.
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Every Saturday, a group of mothers gathers in
Istanbul’s Galatasaray Square to keep the fate of
missing people in the public conscience. Kerem Uzel
/ Narphotos. |
A military officer is
now standing trial in the south-eastern city of
Diyarbakir for his alleged involvement in
extrajudicial killings, while a former admiral has
confirmed that the killings in the 1990s were part
of an official, if secret, “state policy”.
“I think that people in power at the time saw the
unsolved murders as a tool to fight terrorism,” the
retired admiral, Atilla Kiyat, told the Haberturk
television channel this month.
“How can you sleep peacefully at night?” he asked,
addressing Turkey’s political and military
establishment of the 1990s. “Come forward and say
openly whether the unsolved murders were a state
policy and whether those boys [who carried out the
murders] were implementing state policy or not. If
you say that ‘No, there was no such state policy’,
then say it. But they will not say it.”
Mr Kiyat’s statement, a rare call to resolve years
of angst and frustration over the killings and
disappearances, was welcomed by activists and
relatives.
“It is a chance to face up to our past,” Nusirevan
Elci, the president of the bar association in the
south-eastern Turkish province of Sirnak, said in a
telephone interview. “Everyone knew it was state
policy because those were no local events; they were
all over the place. It is unthinkable that some
military officer somewhere acted on his own
initiative.”
In the early 1990s, the PKK rebels were at the peak
of their power in Turkey’s Kurdish region, launching
a wave of attacks against the security forces. The
military responded with a troop increase in
south-eastern Anatolia to counter the growing
insurrectionary fervour. Amid the ensuing fighting,www.ekurd.netaccording
to human rights activists, the state targeted
suspected PKK supporters with a “dirty war” campaign
that included widespread torture, extrajudicial
killings and co-operation between security forces
and mafia hit men.
In 1996 a scandal involving a high-ranking police
officer, a wanted mob leader and a Kurdish
parliamentary deputy offered the first hint that
something was amiss.
The scandal erupted after a car crash that revealed
the three had travelled together in the same
vehicle, and that the mafia boss carried a
diplomatic passport and a gun permit signed by the
government although there was an arrest warrant out
for him.
Leading politicians have been accused of thwarting
investigations into the matter, for example by
refusing to testify before parliamentary
commissions.
A culture of impunity has made it difficult for
lawyers who represent torture victims to bring
police or military officers to trial. Although
political and judicial reforms in recent years have
been launched to bring Turkey closer to the European
Union, progress at chipping away at official
immunity has been slow.
Yesterday, Mr Kiyat entered a courthouse in Istanbul
to testify as a witness in the trial against the
military officer in Diyarbakir. He declined to
answer questions from reporters.
The Association of Those Who Lost Relatives, or
Yakay-Der, a group representing the families of
victims of suspected extrajudicial killings, called
Mr Kiyat’s statement “an admission of guilt that
shines a light on a dark period” and announced it
would bring criminal charges against former state
officials suspected of ordering the killings.
In Istanbul, relatives of the disappeared hold
weekly rallies to keep the deaths in the public
conscience.
But not everyone regards the former admiral’s
admission on live television as a step forward.
Devlet Bahceli, the leader of the far-right
Nationalist Movement Party, accused Mr Kiyat of
showmanship.
“If you know something, there are prosecutors and
judges waiting in line to listen to you,” Mr Bahceli
said.
“But it does nobody any good if you sit down in a
television studio and smear the place that raised
you with insolent remarks.”
The retired admiral may have been motivated by a
sense that military officers who are currently
standing trial are being unfairly punished for
decisions taken by their superiors.
“A lieutenant posted to [the south-eastern Anatolian
province of] Cizre could not just up and say, ‘Well,
I’ll take care of this Hasan or that Mehmet and
finish off terrorism’. No, someone gave the order to
do it.”
Whatever the reasons behind his statement, human
rights activists say it might prove helpful in
finding out the truth.
Cemal Babaoglu, a human rights leader in Sanliurfa,
whose brother, a journalist, disappeared in
mysterious circumstances in 1995, told a recent
meeting organised by a human rights group in the
city that Mr Kiyat “has confirmed what we have
suspected for years”.
Mr Babaoglu added that charges should be brought
swiftly against leading politicians of the 1990s
because “the truth is coming out”.
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