Roboski Massacre Questions Still Unanswered

Ministry of Defense has submitted a report to the parliamentary committee on the massacre of 34 villagers in Şırnak, Uludere by the Turkish air forces.

Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) MP Ertuğrul Kürkçü told bianet that the committee members are unanimously unsatisfied with the scope of the report, signed by the Minister of Defense, İsmet Yılmaz.

"None of our questions are answered. The reason put forward at the report is the decree of confidentiality on the case by the Diyarbakır public prosecutor's office and Uludere court. They claim that they can't send the documents we asked for, because of this decree."

Despite lack of sufficient answers to their questions, Kürkçü said the report contains unrelated, long explanations to the event.

"There're notes about the PKK's attacks which resulted in big losses since 2007. On the other hand, important questions are passed over lightly. They claim that the intelligence they had before the operation were provided through 'intelligence sources of the state and national sources'.

"The report says that given the intelligence at hand about the massacred villagers, they were deemed to be 'members of the terrorist organization' and an operation was executed at night time.

Kürkçü said that their meetings with local military officers were much more fruitful in understanding what had happened.

Chair of the parliamentary committee and ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) MP İhsan Şener also noted that he found the report "dissatisfactory".

Furthermore, chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights, Ayhan Sefer Üstün announced that their work on the massacre is continuing and they expect to finalize a report by the end of this month.

He noted that the confidentiality decree on the case is lengthening the procedures, as all requested documents are subjected to the public prosecutor's approval. (AS/EÜ)

Şu anda sadece İçişleri Bakanlığı'ndan rapor beklediklerini dile getiren Şener, gizlilik kararı olduğu için her kurumun yaptığı çalışmayı kendilerine göndermeden önce savcılıktan izin aldığını, bunun da sürecin uzamasına neden olduğunu söyledi. (AS)