In Turkey, Justice After 20 Years for Kurdish Deaths?

ISTANBUL, Turkey – A decision to move a long-awaited trial over the massacre of six Kurds -- in which a senior general is the top defendant -- from Turkey’s Kurdish southeast to Ankara has unveiled an internal power struggle and cast doubts on the impartiality of the judiciary.

“We have been trying so hard for this trial and at last after 20 years we succeeded. Yet, we could not celebrate because the trial has been moved to Ankara,” complained Tahir Elci, who heads the Diyarbakir Bar Association and represents the plaintiffs.”This creates doubts about the future of the trial,” he charged.

The hearing, scheduled for Tuesday last week in Sirnak, was expected to expose the facts about the unresolved murder of six Kurdish peasants who disappeared on May 14, 1993 in the village of Gorumlu in the southeast.

But the proceedings were moved to Ankara after the Justice Ministry insisted that the lives of the defendants were at risk. The Sırnak Public Prosecutor's Office unsuccessfully objected to the decision and proposed that defendants could testify by teleconference to stop the trial from being transferred elsewhere.

The defendants -- retired Brigadier General Mete Sayar, retired Colonel Hasan Basri Vural, retired Lieutenant Ibrahim Kırac, retired Captain Murat Ali Yıldız, retired Lieutenant Serdar Tekin and former 2nd Commando Battalion Command Tansel Erok – face life sentences if convicted. But they were not present for the first court session in Sırnak.

Elci charged that by transferring the trial to Turkish capital the ministry itself had broken the law.

“According to the law the trial has to be conducted wherever the crime was committed,” he noted. “They moved the trial on the pretext that the defendants would not be secure here. But what about the security of the families who have to travel to Ankara, 1,000 kilometers away from their homes?” Elci asked. “Who is going to protect them? Who is going to pay for the expenses?”

“This is an intervention to the independence of the judiciary,” he said, commenting that by moving the trial the ministry has effectively blocked bringing the officials before the court.

Since the 1990s, it has been common practice in Turkey to transfer trials on human rights abuses, in which the defendants are officials, to other locations.  Since most defendants in the past have reportedly emerged with light or no charges, a decision to move the Sirnak trial is seen as a bad omen for those seeking justice.

According to a report by New York-based Human Rights Watch Sayar, commander of the Sırnak border regiment at the time of the events, is  the most senior military commander to stand trial on suspicion of directly ordering the killing of civilians in that province. Soldiers allegedly buried the bodies of the murdered villagers, though the graves have not been located.

“The failure to bring to justice those responsible for the enforced disappearance and killing of the Gorumlu villagers was part of a pattern of impunity for egregious human rights abuses against the Kurdish civilian population of the southeast in the early 1990s,” according to the HRW report.

“During the conflict, government military and security forces compelled hundreds of thousands of people to abandon their villages, burned their homes and property, and killed, disappeared, or tortured thousands of civilians they suspected of aiding the armed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK),” the report added.

The indictment against the defendants is based on the accounts of three witnesses who were soldiers doing their military service at the time of the killings, as well as the complaints of families of the victims.

According to the indictment six soldiers were killed on June 13, 1993 as a result of a PKK attack near Gorumlu village. Next day, soldiers rounded up villagers, took people from their homes and made them stand at the village square as they set fire to homes and detained six people.

Hukmet Simsek, Hamdo Simsek, Mehmet Salih Demirhan, Mihyedin Ozdemir, Halit Ozdemir and Semdin Culaz were reportedly inhumanly tortured and killed upon the orders of Sayan at the Gorumlu gendarmerie headquarters. Their families were never informed about their whereabouts.

“I see this (the trial) as a very important development,” said Huseyin Aykol, chief editor of the pro-Kurdish daily Ozgur Gundem.  “Yet, at the first session the trial was moved -- rather hijacked -- from the place where the incident took place,” he said. “We can predict that the trial has ended before it started,” he told Rudaw.

Emrehan Uysal, the head of the Human Rights Association of Sırnak voiced similar doubts about the outcome of the proceedings.

“The opening of the trial after 20 years is a positive development and a success for the ones who have been working for this. Yet, the moving of the case to Ankara created doubts about the fairness of the trial,” he said, adding he was nevertheless determined to continue the struggle for truth and justice.

“There are many such incidents in Sırnak. Only between 1991-1992, 120 civilians disappeared,” he claimed. “Mete Sayan was the commander.  Those people (who were killed) were never involved in any armed conflict. They were taken while sitting in their homes. We are working to bring those cases to trial. We are after this. We won’t give up.”