Disappearances in Turkey
ENFORCED DISAPPEARANCES IN TURKEY
Historical Background
Enforced disappearances have not started with September 12, 1980 military coup in Turkey and can be traced back to April 24, 1915 where 262 Armenian intelectuals were taken from their houses to unknown locations, without any information on their whereabouts after that. Like the disappearance of Sabahattin Ali, some significant individual cases after the Armenian Genocide show that this phenomenon was known to the state actors and is resorted to "as needed". However, However, the widespread use of enforced disappearance as a form of state violence began after the September 12, 1980 coup.
During this period, many students, workers, journalists, syndicalists and unemployed people were forcibly disappeared, never leaving the military or police offices they entered, for their alleged membership to armed leftist groups,. This is the first group within enforced disappearance profile. The criminal act, that is enforced disappearance, has been widely and systematically committed as a result of the intensified conflict around Kurdish problem in 1990s.
The National Security Council has declared its decision on “territorial sovereignty and not accomodating PKK in the region” in 1993 and put a particular security strategy in effect. Residents of villages and other areas were focibly displaced, murder by unknown assailants (unlawful and extrajudicial killings) and enforced disappearances became commonplace after this decision came in to effect. The residents of the territory under a state of emergency law and local representatives of Kurdish political movement, including journalists, rights advocates and lawyers, make up the second profile among the targeted groups. The third profile, also the most numerous, is made up of people who live under the state of emergency law and are not perceived to be ‘loyal citizens’, such as farmers, herders, tradesmen, self-employed persons, and students from the region.
Current Situation
The 1990s marked a legal deadlock for the official complaints received by local courts from the families of the forcibly disappeared. On the other hand, for the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), this period proved differently. According to the research carried out by Hafıza Merkezi on the enforced disappearances of the 1990s, out of the 133 complaints received by the ECHR, including friendly settlement options, 87 of the court hearings found the state of Turkey guilty. Until 2007, there were no repercussions of these decisions at local courts level. In 2007, after Ergenekon and Balyoz investigations, this situation has ameliorated. Those found guilty by the ECHR and mentioned in these investigations, military personnel and their accomplices, mostly village guards and informers, started facing trials. By December 2017, with the intensification of Kurdish problem once again, most of these trials acquitted the suspects at the courts of first instance and still await their final decision at the court of appeal level.
We cannot do justice to the efforts of the Saturday People/Mothers, whose work emphasize the weight of enforced disappearances on our collective memory. A group made up of mostly women and rights advocates, held the first of many commemorative vigils at Galatasaray Square in Istanbul in May 27, 1995, in the memory of their forcibly disappeared relatives and drew attention to this phenomenon. Every Saturday at 12:00, these women and their fellow activists sat in Galatasaray Square silently, devoid of chants or slogans, with the photos of the forcibly disappeared. After each sit-in, a story of the disappeared was shared with the press and general public, along with their concrete demands with regards to truth, justice and memory. Relatives of the forcibly disappeared ceased their protests in Galatasaray Square on March 13, 1999 with the slogan: ‘We will continue to search for our disappeared everywhere, not only in Galatasaray’. The protests restarted on January 31, 2009 with the support of Human Rights Association’s Commission Against Disappearances Under Arrest, following the Ergenekon Indictment in 2008. These sit-ins expanded to the cities of Diyarbakır, Cizre, Yüksekova, İzmir and Batman in the following years. This initiative continues their efforts to memorialize enforced disappearances in İstanbul, İzmir and Diyarbakır.
