MP Calls for Government’s Responsibility to Be Investigated

Akın Birdal, MP for the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) in Diyarbakır has been kept out of the Parliamentarian Human Rights Committee’s sub-committee investigating the massacre of 44 people in a village in the southeastern province of Mardin last week. This is despite the fact that it was he who filed a motion demanding an investigation.

Speaking to bianet, Birdal said, “There are several suspicious issues in the event. This tragedy cannot be dismissed with custom, honour killings or profit. The responsibility of the state should not be minimised.”

Not included in sub-committee

Birdal said that he had been excluded from the sub-committee, despite standing as a candidate, and despite the normal practice of including an MP from every party.

He said that Zafer Üskül, the chair of the Parliamentarian Human Rights Committee instead let people vote, and even called Mehmet Ekici, MP for the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), who was not present at the general assembly, to ask if he wanted to be part of the sub-committee.

Despite Ayşe Jale Ağırbaş from the Democratic Left Party (DSP) and Ahmet Ersin from the Republican People’s Party (CHP) arguing for his presence in the sub-committee, he was not taken. Birdal then left the assembly.

Toptan calls for compromise

However, after DTP co-chair Ahmet Türk protested against this procedure, Parliamentary Speaker Köksal Toptan called them and said, “I think we can find a compromise at a reasonable point.”

Birdal told bianet, “The committee is in Mardin on 13 May. I am expecting an invitation.”

Following the election yesterday, members of the sub-committee are Zafer Üskül (Justice and Development Party, AKP), Mehmet Ekici (MHP), Kazım  Ataoğlu (AKP), Ahmet Ersin (CHP), Ayşe Jale Ağırbaş (DSP).

Üskül had defended the vote saying that the sub-committee could only be made up of five people at the most.

Suspicious issues

Birdal told bianet that he believes there are four important issues in the massacre which need to be investigated by the sub-committee:

The manner of the murders: People do not use masks in blood feuds, rather, to show that revenge has been taken, the murder is carried out openly. In such cases, there has never been an example of people being killed while praying. In a region where a woman can stop a fight by intervening and holding her headscarf between people, sixteen women, three of them pregnant, and six children were killed. All of this is very suspicious. The statements of the wounded say that the massacre was going to be blamed on the PKK.

Gendarmerie came late: The three MPs who went to the area the next day found that the gendarmerie is fifteen minutes away from the village, six minutes by vehicle. Gun shots can be heard. However, it took two hours for anyone to go to the village.

Who planned this? The Minister of the Interior says that this was a planned attack. Who planned this, how and why?

Village guard system: We have known the problems of the system since 1985. The Human Rights Association (İHD) today published a list of events. […] The village guard system has to be questioned once again. When we went to the Beşağaç village (where 12 people were killed in October 2007) with a committee, I was able to follow committee chair Üskül’s first impressions; three days later, when the report was written, I witnessed a change of heart in him. That is why I asked for an investigation. (TK/AG)