"TURKEY MUST APOLOGISE TO RELATIVES OF DISAPPEARED"

BIA Magazine
June 1 2009
Turkey

A Justice Tribunal called for the trial of politicians and army
members at a War Crimes Court, as well as an apology from the state.

Two weeks of activities protesting against the many disappearances in
police or gendarmerie custody in Turkey ended with a Justice Tribunal,
organised by the International Committee against Disappearances (ICAD).

Held at Istanbul’s Bilgi University Dolapdere campus on 31 May, the
tribunal called for an apology by the state for all disappearances,
as well as the trial of generals, police officers and politicians on
duty during the period of most intensive fighting with the PKK.

Å~^ahin Tumuklu, a member of the tribunal, called for the following
in a statement:

* The one-sided understanding of massacre and loss in history books,
which has been identified with the Armenian forced migration,
should change.

* An independent delegation should be formed to identify the number
of disappeared people and their stories. Ottoman and Turish archives
should be opened, and mass graves and graveyards of the poor should
be found and opened.

* 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.

* 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.

* 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.

* Disclosures from the Ergenekon file have brought to light several
"state secrets", i.e. crimes. They must become court cases.

* The state of the Turkish Republic must apologise to families.

* 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.

* Police custody should be abolished; rather, people taken in by the
police should be brought to a judge directly.

The statement further called for the lifting of immunity for anyone
responsible and for the politicians of the period between 1991 and
1996 to be tried. The list of people they accuse includes:

Veli Kucuk (known as the founder of the clandestine gendarmerie
intelligence unit JITEM, said to be responsible for hundreds of
murders), Arif Dogan and Levent Ersöz (also from JITEM), Chiefs of
Staff Dogan GureÅ~_, Huseyin Kıvrıkoglu, Hakkı Karadayı, Hilmi
Ozkök, YaÅ~_ar Buyukanıt, Presidents Kenan Evren, Turgut Ozal
(deceased) and Suleyman Demirel, Prime Ministers Mesut Yılmaz,
Tansu Ciller and Recep Tayyıp Erdogan, former Deputy PM Murat
Karayalcın, Ministers of the Interior Abdulkadir Aksu, İsmet Sezgin,
Mehmet Agar and Meral AkÅ~_ener, Governor of the Emergency Law Region
(OHAL) Hayri Kozakcıoglu, Generals Hasan Kundakcı, Ä°lker BaÅ~_bug,
Hikmet Köksal, Å~^ener Eruygur, HurÅ~_it Tolon, Mete Sayar, Korkut
Eken and İsmet Deliyıldız.