Abidin Pulat
person- Image
- Sex
- Male
- Civil status
- Married
- Occupation
- Peasant
- Dependants
- 7
- Event description
Per press statement released by Cumartesi İnsanları on 19th April 2014, Abidin Pulat, who was born in 1959, was married and had five kids. Abidin had to leave his village after he was forced to become a village guard and moved to Silopi. He worked in the wheat fields in Bediro village along with his brother Sabri, who was living and working as a farmer in the Pirana village of Silopi (Şırnak) with his wife and eight children. He was also the village mukhtar. During the 1990s the village was forcefully evacuated and the villagers forced to migrate. Hence the family moved to another village, Bediro (Buğdaylı), and Sabri started working in the fields owned by others.
On 14th October 1995, soldiers came to the Bediro village in two military vehicles and asked for the identity papers of the workers. They took Sabri and Abidin Pulat and left. Abidin Pulat returned home two days later only to be taken into custody again. The two men were never seen again.
Pulat family applied to the authorities in Şırnak, Mardin and Cizre to find the two brother without any substantial result. Village guardsmen found heavily tortured dead bodies of three men in Kasrik region between Şırnak and Cizre. They thought that two of the bodies belonged to Abidin and Sabri but did not inform the families. On 31st December 1995, village guardsmen buried these three bodies in a common grave. The authorities denied the request of the families to re-open the graves for identification.
- Geolocation
Latitude: 37.3055432
Longitude: 42.4983217
- Geolocation
- City
- Şırnak
- District
- Silopi
- Date of disappearance
- Oct 14, 1995
- Year of disappearance
- 1995
- Age at the time of disappearance
- Yaş:35Ay:11Gün:17
- Status of the victim
- Still missing
- Type of source material
- Decision and correspondences of prosecutor
- Interview with family member (audio and video records)
- Press release or report of human rights organisations
- Printed or online news
- Decision by the prosecution office
- Daimi arama kararı ile zamanaşımı bürosuna tevdi edildi
- Summary of the legal proceedings
Following the disappearance of Abidin Pulat and his brother in 1995, their family applied to various authorities, to no avail.
In 2008, Şırnak Bar Association applied to the Office of Silopi Chief Public Prosecutor for the investigation of a claim regarding the existence of a mass grave inside an old military facility. The public prosecutor announced that there would be an exhumation in the area under the scope of the investigation. Families of 54 people, including Abidin Pulat’s family, applied to the Office of the Public Prosecutor as plaintaiffs for disappearances and unlawful killings of their relatives, suspecting that their bodies might be burried in the area. In 2009, an exhumation was conducted in the area. As to the final report of the Forensic Medicine, all the obtained bones belonged to animals. The investigation was transferred to the Office of Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutors and then in 2014, it was sent back to the Office of Silopi Chief Public Prosecutor. As of 2019, Hafıza Merkezi does not have any further information regarding the progress of this investigation.