Halit Ertuş
person- Image
- Sex
- Male
- Civil status
- Married
- Occupation
- Shepherd
- Event description
Per ruling delivered by the European Court of Human Rights; five shepherds, Ahmet Bozkır, Halit Ertuş, Lokman Kaya, Selahattin Aşkan and Süleyman Tekin were pasturing their sheep near the Otluca village of Hakkâri on 26th August 1996, as the Hakkâri Mountain and Commando Brigade launched a military operation around the village.
The five shepherds did not come home that evening, nor in the following days, nor have their bodily remains been found. When the families asked the Brigade Commander about their family members, the response was “maybe they joined the PKK”. In their statements to the Public Prosecutor, gendarme officials denied the detention of the five villagers. Other villagers who had been taken under custody during the same operation said that they had not seen any of the five villagers.
After learning of a witness testimony given to the Parliamentary Investigation Commission on the Susurluk Scandal that the witness had heard via radio that the five shepherds had been killed, Halit Ertuş’s son demanded that this witness be interrogated for the investigation into the disappearance of the five shepards. On 8th December 1997, in his statement to the Public Prosecutor, the witness stated that a high-ranking gendarme official had told him that they had killed the five shepherds. Though, the high-ranking gendarme official later denied this.
Since there was not an effective investigation, the families applied to the European Court of Human Rights on 16th May 2004. The court found the Republic of Turkey in violation of articles 2 (right to life) and 13 (right to effective remedy) of the Convention and ruled that pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages of the victims’ families be covered.
- Geolocation
Latitude: 37.577427
Longitude: 43.736782
- Geolocation
- City
- Hakkari
- Date of disappearance
- Aug 26, 1996
- Year of disappearance
- 1996
- Age at the time of disappearance
- Yaş:65
- Status of the victim
- Still missing
- Decision by the prosecution office
- Decision of non-prosecution due to statute of limitations
- Verdict of ECHR
- Violation of the right(s)
- Articles violated according to ECHR verdict
- Article 13: Right to an effective remedy
- Article 2: Substantive violation of the right to life
- Summary of the legal proceedings
Per ruling delivered by the ECHR, the families of the five shepherds, who went missing as they pastured their animals on the same day the Hakkâri Mountain and Commando Brigade launched a military operation around the village, applied to the military and civilian authorities. The Commando Brigade and the police force denied any involvement in the disappearance while the former claimed that they had most probably joined the PKK. The Hakkari Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office took the deposition of a witness who claimed that on the day of the incident they heard via radio that the shepherds had been killed by the brigade during the opposition; however, the investigation did not produce any results.
Upon the exhaustion of local remedies, families of five villagers applied to the European Court of Human Rights. The court found the Republic of Turkey in violation of articles 2 (right to life) and 13 (right to effective remedy) of the Convention and ruled that pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages of the victims’ families be covered.
As of October 2014, the Hakkari Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office issued a standing search warrant for the shepherds.