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.