Following the recommendation of the NSC the state of emergency was lifted in Tunceli and Hakkari as of 30 July and for a last term of 4 months extended in the province of Diyarbakır and Şırnak. The decision passed the GNAT on 19 June. In theory OHAL ended on 1 December, but the Office of the OHAL Governor existed until the end of 2002. On 13 December OHAL Governor Gökhan Aydıner was asked how he could still participate in official ceremonies, even though the state of emergency had been lifted he said: “The Office of the Governor for the Region under a State of Emergency was established by a decree and can only be lifted by another decree. We are working to terminate the practical work.”
During the meeting on 29 June the NSC proposed the formation of a state secretariat for the Southeast. This suggestion was discussed in political parties and NGOs. The İstanbul branch of the HRA stated on 1 July that a Secretariat for the Southeast would be nothing else, but the prolongation of OHAL asserting that the discussions led by the NSC on the establishment of such a body indicated “the maintenance of discriminative practices against the people living in the Southeast”.
Chair for HADEP in Şırnak Resul Sadak made a similar statement on 15 July. He stated that the Secretariat would reflect only a nominal change, but that the real problem was the change of rationality. The businessmen and employers in the Southeast also reacted to the establishment of such a body raising instead the demand for economic investments in the region.
Human rights violations in Tunceli in August intensified suspicions that the lifting of OHAL might remain only on paper. On 3 August the daily “Yedinci Gündem” was entry to the region according to Article 11/e of the Decree No. 235 with the force of law. OHAL had been lifted in Tunceli, but it still had the status of neighboring province. Tunceli Police HQ confiscated all copies of the paper. Local sources stated that the controls on the roads were still continuing in Tunceli province. The control post Geyiksu, Tornova, Halbori and Gözeler leading to Ovacık district and permanent controls at the central and Çiçekli Gendarmerie Station in Hozat district, as well as controls at the Garn factory and the landing stage of the ferry in Pertek district still existed.
In August the photographers Ferda and Dilek Çağlayan working with the journal Atlas were detained in Tunceli while they were taking the photographs in the Aliboğazı zone. They were released after eight hours of interrogation but their films were seized by the gendarmerie for investigation.
Ferda Çağlayan made a statement on the event and said, “Since the State of Emergency was lifted, we went there without taking permission from local authorities. After the second day the gendarmerie came and took us to the station. We were told that entrance to the zone we were photographing was forbidden, and that they might have shot us... While going to Hozat highlands we were subjected to identity controls three times. And, I can say on the basis of what I had encountered that the State of Emergency seems to continue in Tunceli.”
On 13 December the daily “Özgür Gündem” published an interview with Sezgin Tanrıkulu, chairman of Diyarbakır Bar Association:
“Emergency legislation (OHAL) is described as a temporary rule, even in the Constitution, but is lasted 23 years.
Even of we leave martial law aside the Law 2845 on Emergency Legislation and the decrees 285, 424, 425 and 430, which have been issued accordingly and declared to have the force of law have given the governor for the OHAL region extraordinary powers. The OHAL Governor has used this power extensively. The powers include the right to evacuate villages, to “exile” civil servant, to ban meetings and demonstration and many more such measures… The fact that you cannot appeal against OHAL measures is another example of unlawfulness… The main question is what happens to those, who were subjected to violations of their rights during this time. What about the “exiled” persons, what about those, whose village were burnt down, what about the associations that were closed? It needs new legislation to install their right. We as the bar association will do what we can to make a contribution to this process, but you should not think that because OHAL was lifted rights and democracy have been installed everywhere. For the public staff the notion of “critical province” has been introduced. This in itself is already
disturbing.”
Human rights violations continued in Diyarbakır and Şırnak until the end of the year, although the state of emergency was lifted on 30 November. Mehmet Elkatmış, chairman of the Human Rights Commission in the GNAT stated on 12 December that serious allegations continued to be received from the OHAL region and he would suggest to make the first inspection in the Southeast.
Short Balance Sheet from OHAL
Martial law that was announced in 1979 ended on 19 July 1987 in the provinces of Diyarbakır, Bingöl, Hakkari, Mardin and Siirt. The decree 285 with the force of a law introduced on 10 July 1987 the Office of a Governor for the Region under a State of Emergency (OHAL) and ruled that the provinces of Bingöl, Diyarbakır, Elazığ, Hakkari, Mardin, Siirt, Tunceli and Van should be the OHAL provinces. Adıyaman, Bitlis and Muş were declared neighboring provinces. On 6 May 1990 Batman and Şırnak became provinces and were included in the list of OHAL provinces raising the number of provinces to 13. On 19 March 1994 Bitlis was included, while Elazığ was excluded, but given the state of neighboring province. On 19 July 1995 Adıyaman was dropped from the list of neighboring provinces. On 30 November 1996 Elazığ was dropped from the list of neighboring provinces, but Mardin was declared neighboring province. On 6 October 1997 emergency legislation was lifted in the provinces of Batman, Bingöl and Bitlis. The provinces became neighboring provinces. On 30 November 1999 Siirt was declared a neighboring province. On 30 July 2000 the state of emergency was lifted in Van. On 30 July 2002 emergency legislation was lifted in Tunceli and Hakkari and on 30 November emergency legislation ended in Diyarbakır and Şırnak.
Between 19 July 1987 and 30 November 2002 the state of emergency was renewed 57 times, each time for four months. The extraordinary rule of OHAL was not only applied in the region under a state of emergency and the officially called neighboring provinces, but in almost all provinces in the southeast. During the armed clashes the whole region was the territory for internal operations. During the whole of the 1990s human rights violations such as extra-judicial executions, political killings, “disappearances”, deaths in custody, destruction and evacuation of villages, torture and rape were notorious, because the authorities insisted on solving the Kurdish question militarily. Decree 285 with the force of a law equipped the OHAL Governor with large powers and according to Article 7 these practices could not be charged in court.
The powers of the OHAL Governor were extended on 10 April 1990 with decree 413 and later with 424 and 425. On 15 December 1990 decree 430 with the force of a law entered into force under the title of “Additional Measures to be taken During the Continuation of Emergency Legislation”.
The OHAL Governor was empowered to order individuals or groups that endangered the public order to live outside the OHAL region. Decree 430 gave the OHAL Governor the right to ban publications that reported on the actions in the region wrongly, endangered public order or made the people nervous to be printed or copied or (for those printed outside the region) to enter the region and to be distributed. During the time of OHAL more than 30 newspapers and journals were banned from entering the region.
Decree 430 also allowed for serious restrictions on trade unions’ activities and gave the governor the right to appoint civil servants elsewhere (“exile” them). Accordingly many trade unionists were sent into “exile”.
Article 3/c of decree 430 allowed for the extension of detention to up to 40 days. The provision said that on suggestion of the OHAL Governor and on demand of a prosecutor and order of a judge, prisoners could be taken out of prison for additional periods of 10 days each. On entry and leave of the prison health reports were to be issued. Finally, Article 8 of decree 430 provided that the OHAL Governor and other governor could not be penalized for the practices under these provisions.
During the OHAL rule the threats against the right to life and personal security reached an unprecedented dimension. In particular in the first half of the 1990s, when the PKK gained mass support, political killings, “disappearances” and attacks on settlements and individuals became part of the daily life.
According to the findings of the HRFT 933 people lost their lives in the OHAL region as a result of raids on houses and work places, allegedly not listening to stop warning, arbitrary shooting and killing after detention, summed up as extra-judicial executions. Most of these incidents happened between 1991 and 1994. Of 699 extra-judicial executions during this time 492 happened in the OHAL region. It has to be added that among the 207 remaining victims many had become a target because of their stand on the Kurdish question.
The killings by unidentified assailants became another human rights feature in the OHAL region. The HRFT counted
1,774 killings by unidentified assailant between 1990 and 2002. 1,650 of them happened in the OHAL region.
Between 1992 and 1995 at least 1,363 killings by unidentified assailants were conducted in the region under responsibility of the OHAL Governor.
Between 1989 and 2002 the HRFT counted 176 cases in the OHAL region, where a person had been detained or serious evidence existed that security personnel had apprehended the person and “disappeared”. The peak of such incidents was in 1994. In the whole of Turkey 57 persons “disappeared”, 53 of them in the OHAL region.
During the time of armed clashes the whole of the OHAL region was an active field of operations. Between 1992 and 2002 at least 575 people lost their lives as a result of mine explosions or explosions of unattended bombs. Hundreds of people were injured. On 8 November Nejat Taştan, SG of the HRA, announced the Turkey report on Landmines stating that 838 people had been killed and 937 people had been injured through mine explosions. He added that 146 incidents with military equipment that had been left behind occurred, killing 137 people and injuring
213 persons.
Article 2 of decree 285 with the force of law empowered the OHAL Governor to change the places of whole settlements or order them to join other settlements. Even though there are hardly any examples of “legally” ordered evacuations of villages and settlements the depopulization of villages and hamlets became a systematic practice in the 1990s as part of an internal security operation.
In 1998 the parliamentarian research commission for this problem issued a report stating that as of November 1997 the number of evacuated settlements was 3,228 (905 villages and 2,523 hamlets) in the region under a state of emergency and neighboring provinces. The number of internally displaced people was shown as 378,335.
Human rights organizations in Turkey estimate the number of evacuated settlement to be around 4,000 and the number of people forced to migrate to be around 3 million. The practice of enforced migration was not restricted to the OHAL region and neighboring provinces, but implemented in the whole area of the “internal security operation”. Most incidents were reported between 1993 and 1997. The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor in the US State Department stated in its 2002 report, released on 31 March 2003: “The Interior Minister confirmed that in 25 provinces in the former state of emergency region, 4,455 villages and hamlets have been destroyed or deserted.” After 1997 less incidents of enforced migration were reported but restrictive measures such as pressure to become village guard, embargo on food, burning of forests, gardens and crops, torture and ill-treatment during raids on villages, continued systematically. Some settlements were partly or completely “emptied” and individuals were forced to leave.
The food embargo and ban on using pastureland in the mountains had a dangerous effect on public and economic life in the region. The food embargo was first introduced in Tunceli in 1991 and shortly afterwards extended to Bingöl and Lice district in Diyarbakır province. In Şırnak province the practice of food embargo started in 1992 and covered many villages in the districts of the province. The food embargo that was officially termed “controlled transport of food” was loosened in the second half of the 1990s, but continued over a decade. The most affected areas were in the provinces of Tunceli, Şırnak, Bingöl, Diyarbakır, Siirt, Batman, Bitlis, Hakkari, Mardin and Ağrı. At the time the food embargo was denied, but Tunceli Governor Atıl Uzelgün went in 1994 as far as closing the mills. On 2 October 2000 the office of the governor in Tunceli declared that the controlled transport of food had come to an end. Yet, reports of the food embargo were also received in 2001.
On 4 April 1985 the Law 442 on Villages was changed by Law No. 3715 to introduce the system of temporary village guards. The first group of 40 people was engaged in Eruh district and its villages (Siirt provinces). The official declaration was that the population should develop own means of defense, but the growing number of village guards became known as the source of gross human rights violations. Their names were mentioned in cases of killings, torture and rape, but also in cases of smuggling, robbery and gangs. The research council of the Prime Ministry said in the report on Susurluk in January 1998 that the village guards were the part of society that was mostly related to dirty jobs.
Once the armed clashes decreased decisively the incidents of food embargo, ban on pastureland and similar practices went down slowly, but the pressure of the village guards on the local population continued. In 2002 alone the village guards killed at least 12 villagers.
No concrete number on people employed as village guards exists. The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor in the US State Department stated in its 2002 report, released on 31 March 2003: “The Government continued to organize, arm, and pay a civil defense force of more than 65,000, mostly in the southeast region.” In August the Bliss Party (SP) deputy for Van, Fethullah Erbaş noted that the fate of some 56 thousand people that were still serving as village guards after OHAL was lifted remained unclear and added: “They hold kalashnikovs on their arms and own numerous bullets. They are present everywhere in the region as an armed force. These people make their lives with the salary they receive from the state and if no solution is found for their status, we will be left with some 56 thousand unemployed armed people”.