Módulo 2 Módulo Técnico

to be village guards collectively, that a meeting had been held and Engin Karadağ had provided them with information on the PKK.

Celal Başlangıç, in his article entitled “Detention for those who Refuse to be Village

Guards” published in the daily Radikal of 24 December 1996, related the developments in Lice

after 20 December as follows:

The deadline given to the inhabitants of Lice had expired. The muhtars of the villages and neighbourhoods had been told “Within 10 days, you will be village guards or else....” Finally each muhtar was requested to provide a list of 10 people to be assigned as village guards. The

muhtars did not abide by this request. One night, all the houses in Lice were raided. All the men

gathered in the commando battalion on the night of 20 December. There was pushing and shoving and people got hurt. First state employees and the old were released. Engin Karadağ, who had led the latest “confessor terror” campaign in the region was there too. First he told the inhabitants of Lice why they should be village guards. Then he said a number of people among the crowd. And 110 village guards started to work.

By elimination, the number of the “detainees” was reduced to 120. Their families were now waiting in front of the main entrance to the battalion. From time to time, tension between them and the soldiers on guard increased. While the families were waiting outside, the detainees inside were subject to “military training without arms.” It was said that those who had suddenly agreed to be “voluntary village guards” were not given arms “in order to avoid any possible accident” during detention. Meanwhile, no information had been received about the fate of 15 people who were subjected to “special treatment” after being said by the confessor “Arteş.”

Yesterday (23 December) a large group of people from Lice applied to the Diyarbakır Branch of the İHD. They tried specify the names of each of the detainees. The İHD executives were able to determine the names and surnames of 46 people by noon yesterday. There also tried to determine the surnames of the rest. There have been attempts to impose the village guard system on the last few remaining villages. According to unofficial data, there are approximately 250,000 soldiers and about 50,000 police and Special Team personnel in the State of Emergency Region. The number of village guards exceeds 60,000. There were special efforts made to make citizens of Kurdish origin into village guards, as in Lice and Savur. Since there are approximately 400,000 soldiers, police and village guards, and this seemed insufficient, I wonder how many PKK militants there must be to make it necessary to increase this number? Three thousand, five thousand, ten thousand?…

On the previous night (22 December), two village guard chiefs were the guests of the ‘Teketek’ programme broadcast on Kanal D, hosted by Fatih Altaylı: Mustafa Zeydan, True Path Party (DYP) MP for Hakkari, and Kamil Atak, Mayor of Cizre. The status of Atak before becoming a guard and during his first years during his term as a guard was not revealed during the programme. If Atak had been, as he declared, a guard “who feared first God, then the state” since 1985, then how was it that Cizre could maintain its status as one of the places where the PKK was able to conduct its most effective mass demonstrations right up until the 1990s? Murat Ateş from Cizre took part in the programme by telephone, and asked Atak why he had moved to the DYP although he had formerly been from the Nationalist Action Party; and he also asked Kamil Acun, the Governor of Şırnak, about claims of wedding parries he was running for billions of TL. To these questions, both answered in the same manner: “Separatist, gunman… he should be caught as soon as possible…” The things said that night were immediately put into practice yesterday. According to news from Cizre, people with the surname Ateş were being detained one by one. The village guards are able to raid to the government residences and to forcibly remove an arrested suspect from the prison. Such acts are condoned. When a prosecutor is killed in a district the mayor of which is “co-operating with the state,” this incident is covered up, and when the same mayor loses the elections after becoming village guard chief, the woman judge who is the head of the Election Board, is dismissed and expelled from the town.

Mahmut Şakar, İHD Head Office Deputy President and President of Diyarbakır Branch, held a press conference at the Southeastern Journalists Association in Diyarbakır on 24 December. There Şakar referred to the incidents in Lice as “a story of concentration camp,” and said the following: “According to an application filed with our branch on 13 December,

instance, teachers named Kadir Gökdere and Taha Gül, who were detained in İstanbul upon the testimony by Karadağ and who were remanded by Diyarbakır SSC on 11 September, were each sentenced to 18 years 9 months in prison in December. Ahmet Cengiz, the Chairperson of Diyarbakır Chamber of Architects, who had been detained on 18 January, stated that he had been tortured whilst 6 days in detention.

Diyarbakır Provincial Gendarme Commander and other high-ranking officials went to Lice on 11 December, convened 67 local muhtars and held a secret meeting. They wanted the muhtars to give them lists of 10 people from each of their neighbourhoods who would agree to become village guards voluntarily. The chiefs stated that they would not submit such lists as they would be held responsible by the people, and the officials should deal with the matter themselves.

“According to statements made by the victims, who visited our association on 23 December, soldiers from the District Gendarme Command detained all men between 15 and 70 years of age in Lice at about 7pm on 20 December on saying they intended to hold a meeting. Any who resisted this demand were beaten. After completion of the detention procedure, all the inhabitants of the town were gathered together on land owned by the gendarme station. Here, a military official addressed the crowd of 2,000-2,500 people, saying to them, ‘I will take 100 guards from among you, and hold a meeting with them. If you do not agree to the village guard system, all of you will remain here. I will not allow you to move away from Lice. Halis Toprak is going to open a tomato paste factory and a marble factory here. You will be responsible for the security of these factories.’ The applicants said that the Mayor of Lice and the confessor militant Engin Karadağ also made speeches. After the speeches, the elderly and state employees were released, then 100 long-barrelled rifles were put in front of the rest, who were ordered ‘Take up your arms’. Nobody took the guns, so a group of soldiers was ordered by the military official to load their guns, and to take aim at the crowd. The crowd was threatened: ‘If you do not take your arms, we will fire.’ Meanwhile, 7 people were beaten with rifles butts and taken away. The larger part of the crowd was released between 4am nd 7am on 21 December, but 110 people were detained. The families of the detainees awaited the release of their relatives outside the main entrance of the battalion until 23 December. At about 11am on 22 December, a quarrel broke out between the soldiers and the detainees in the garden of the District Gendarme Command, and the detainees were beaten. According to news we have received today (24 December), the detainees were given the guns and sent back to their homes, but their ID cards were confiscated, and the 7 wounded people have been receiving treatment at their homes.”

Protests

The practice of pressurising people to be village guards in Lice provoked tension in the district and made it the focus of attention. Various delegations were sent to the region, and reports were drawn up. Anxiety increased when news was received which indicated that the confessor Engin Karadağ was in the district and that transportation between Lice and the surrounding provinces and districts was obstructed.

A meeting was held at İHD İstanbul Branch on 25 December about the incidents in Lice, with the participation of people including Eren Keskin, Deputy President of the İHD, Tahsin Ekinci, President of the People of Lice Foundation, Cemal Coşkun, representative of the HADEP, former MP Tarık Ziya Ekinci and former Lice Mayor Nazmi Balkaş. The meeting dis- cussed the incidents in Lice and the attitude of the state. Keskin said, “The emergency state legis- lation implemented in the region is a war constitution, which should be amended immediately. If the Turkish people favour peace, then the state, too, will be compelled to favour peace.” Tahsin Ekinci invited everybody advocating peace to resist the village guard system and the system of using former militants as informers. He said, “The humane living conditions no longer exist in Lice. The state should expose those responsible.” Balkaş declared that there were too many murders by unknown assailants in Lice.

The 43-strong “Lice Monitoring Delegation,” which was set up to investigate the situa- tion in Lice and which comprised of 43 people, went to the town on 30 December. Inhabitants of Lice who were gathered outside the District Gendarme Command to try and obtain news from their relatives tried to explain their experiences to the delegates. They stated that they were under pressure, that there were almost no young people left in the town, and that those who were left behind were living in fear. They emphasised that the pressure would intensify after the delegation left the district. The delegation learned that Mehmet Gökdere, Şirin Şanlı, Ramazan Kasap, Mehmet Karadağ, Hacı Şirin, and someone named Ahmet, whose surname was not known, had been forced to become village guards and had been tortured in detention. On the other hand, Hacı İlbaş, the Deputy District Governor and District Gendarme Commander, claimed that nobody had been forced to become village guards, and that 84 people had applied voluntarily. When the delegates said that they wished to interview the 84 people in question, Hacı İlbaş brought the 84 people, who were in the Commando Battalion, to the town centre. Faysal Özçift, the Secretary General of the KESK, said that they would not speak to these people unless assurances were given, as they were concerned for their lives. Upon these words, a plainclothed police officer punched Faysal Özçift by saying, “Where were you when thousands of people were martyred?”

The police officers also insulted and cursed İHD Deputy Presidents Eren Keskin and Mahmut Şakar and various journalists, and forcibly seized journalists’ films. (*)

State of Emergency Regional Governor Necati Bilican said that there were attempts in Lice at provocation by use of the pretext of “pressure to force people to become village guards.” Bilican claimed that some executive members of the Democracy Platform, the HADEP and some trade unions had gone to Lice and attempted to create an atmosphere of tension on the pretext that the people had been forced to become village guards, and demanded that the press should deal with this issue in an objective way to avoid any further provocation. In the press conference he held on 1 January 1997, Bilican claimed that “some groups tried to prevent the provision of services to the region,” and said, “They requested permission from me so that they could go to Lice and observe incidents on the spot. So I gave them the permission to go. I did not have to. A group with bad intentions tried to create a commotion in Lice with the support of the journalists. A few sensitive members of the media were not deceived. However, a great part of the media reported stories claiming that the people in Lice had been forced to become village guards. There is no such issue.”

On 9 January 1997, the “Lice Monitoring Delegation” went back to Lice, but not allowed to enter the town. This time the delegation consisted of about 60 people including Akın Birdal, İHD President, Sedat Yurtdaş (former DEP MP) and Şanar Yurdatapan, prominent human rights campaigner. It convened upon an invitation from the Diyarbakır Democracy Platform, but was halted at Mermer Gendarme Station, the first check-point on the road between Diyarbakır and Lice. There, a colonel said that there was no access to Lice on 8, 9, and 10 January since “there was intelligence that the PKK intended to conduct illegal actions.” The members of the delegation returned to Diyarbakır, and tried to get an appointment from Necati Bilican. During the meeting he agreed to with 5 members of the delegation on condition that journalists would not report on it, Bilican claimed that there was no pressure on the people. After the meeting, the delegates made a statement: “The implementation of village guard system is seen as a source of employment, but 65 of the 84 people who were forced to be village guards already had jobs. We were not allowed to enter Lice, which implies that the state is trying to hide something.”

A delegation from the HADEP attempted to visit Lice on 14 January 1997, but they too were refused access. In Diyarbakır, members of the delegation, including HADEP Deputy President Ahmet Türk, Deputy Presidents Güven Özata and Sedat Yurtdaş, and members of the Party Assembly, Sırrı Sakık, Kemal Parlak, Feridun Yazar and Selim Okçuoğlu, met with representatives of community organisations, and visited Necati Bilican. Making a statement after the meeting, Ahmet Türk said that Bilican did not explain the grounds for refusing them access to Lice, which implied acknowledgement of the implementation of the mandatory appointment of people as village guards.

Members of the Parliamentary Human Rights Commission visited Necati Bilican in Diyarbakır on 14 January 1997, and carried out investigations in Lice on 15 January 1997. In the press conference held after the mission, Demir Berberoğlu, True Path MP for Eskişehir, stated that they had interviewed the authorities, village guards, and people who refused to be appointed as village guards. Berberoğlu abstained from explaining his impressions on the situation in Lice, though there were many questions about this, and Hakan Tartan, Democratic Left MP for İzmir, answered the questions as follows: “Initially there were 114 village guards, then this number decreased to 84. 30 people had given up within two days.” Sebgetullah Seydaoğlu, Motherland Party MP for Diyarbakır, said “When we look at the region, we see that almost all of the village

(*) _{The “Observation Report” prepared by the delegation read the following: “It has been understood that the}

people had become the village guards not voluntarily, but as the result of the illegal imposition by the military officials. It has been concluded that the inhabitants of the district, who were put under mandatory training, have been subject to significant material and moral pressure. It has been understood that the men hesitated to interview with the members of the delegation as they were threatened prior to the delegation’s visit to Lice by the security officers, who wanted to avoid any interviews with the members of the delegation. Despite the threats and pressure, the women and children quoted the incidents as they happened, openly declaring through their protests that they could not reconcile to become village guards with their dignity, and this has provided evidence for the bankruptcy of insisting on the military logic. We are anxious that a massive migration may take place in Lice if the pressure continues.”

guards were forced into the job. People of all ages have been forcibly armed. It is ridiculous that the state relies on a few village guards in a district where a garrison of soldiers is deployed.” (*)

The developments in Tunceli

Another region which was frequently on the agenda with respect to the pressure and attacks was Tunceli, its districts and villages. The pressure and various practices of security officers, particularly embargo, frequently came on to the public agenda in 1996 as in 1994 and 1995. The incidents in Tunceli and its vicinity led to debates and protests. Several reports were issued on Tunceli, and delegations frequently carried out investigations in the region.

For instance, Tunceli Trade Unions Platform published a report in July about problems in Tunceli. The report emphasised the fact that the people were seen as potential criminals, and that problems not taken seriously by the authorities and for which the necessary steps were not taken became almost insoluble. The report also that there was no serious investment in Tunceli, that dairy and animal food factories established years before had been privatised on the grounds that they were making a loss, and that the workers were then dismissed and replaced by new workers who worked for the minimum wage. In 1995, the report said, an amount of 2 trillion 140 billion TL ($22 million) out of 2 trillion 600 billion TL ($26 million) allocated for personnel ex- penditure in Tunceli, was paid to the security officers. There were no investments in Tunceli between 1985-95, but a great part of the money allocated to investment was spent in construction of the security posts. The report stated that activities undertaken with regard to the medical problems in Tunceli had never been at the desired level; that there had been handicaps here since 1990; that there had been an attempt to solve the problem in 1954 with a 60-bed state hospital, that since this had not fulfilled the needs of the province, a 40-bed annex had been built in the subsequent years, and that in recent years this 100-bed hospital was the only place in the province dealing with health problems. The report noted that educational problems were graver in Tunceli than in the rest of the country. The report maintained that animal husbandry was about to grind to a halt as the main method of subsistence due to bans, and that transportation constituted one of the greatest problems in the region, with hundreds of hamlets having no roads for transportation.

In September, a delegation of 35 people, including Ercan Kanar, President of the İstanbul Branch of İHD, Murat Gürler, representative of Mazlum-Der, Selman Yeşilgöz, President of the People of Tunceli Association, Celal Demir, President of the Elazığ Branch of İHD, Tayfun İşçi, representative of the Public Sector Workers Trades Union Confederation (KESK) and journalists Celal Başlangıç and Koray Düzgören, visited the region in order to investigate the