Mass grave in Van: 'All they want is their children's bones'

Click to read the article in Turkish / Kurdish

In the case filed by families who wanted to receive the bones of their relatives in a mass grave found in Çatak, Van, the court ruled that the bones should be handed over to the Sub-governor's Office because the families failed to pay the 40,000 lira (4,600 USD) "retainer fee."

Turan Ece, the attorney of families, filed an appeal with the Court of Cassation, demanding the bones be handed over to the families and court costs and attorney's fees be covered by the state.

CLICK - Families demanding bones found in a mass grave billed 40 thousand lira 

"People's 'right to bury' their relatives, a fundamental principle of natural law that does not need a regulation in positive law, has been ignored," says the petition.

The only thing the families wanted was their children's bones, the attorney stressed.

Ece previously pointed out that the bones given to the Sub-Governor's Office might be buried in a common grave.

Bones are kept at the courthouse

When the lawsuit was first filed, the families' request for financial aid was accepted; the court ruled that legal aid should be offered for the case.

However, though the families' financial standing had not changed during the trial, this ruling of legal aid was lifted before the case was concluded.

It was understood during the examination that the vast majority of the bones had been taken to the Fareşin highland before the examination on August 21, 2014. The rest of the bones will be handed over to the Sub-Governor's Office if the Court of Cassation upholds the ruling.

The bones are now in the forensic safe of the Çatak Courthouse.

The mass grave

Several security officers and Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) members lost their lives in the armed clash that erupted in Görentaş highland of Kayaboğazı village in Çatak, Van on October 12, 1998.

While the bodies of the deceased security officers were collected from the battleground, PKK members' bodies were left there. According to the official sources, 22 PKK members lost their lives in the clashes whereas the PKK announced 27 losses.

A short while later, local people brought the bodies together and buried them 50 centimeters below the ground.

According to the petition conveyed to the Court of Cassation, the legal struggle for the bodies began in 2011 when the Van Branch of the Human Rights Association announced the finding of the grave in Çatak.

After the İHD statement, people who thought that the bodies in the grave might be their children's made separate applications to the Çatak Chief Public Prosecutor's Office, demanding the delivery of the bones.

The prosecutor's office decided not to prosecute the case on August 24, 2011. An appeal to the prosecutors' decision was rejected by the Erciş Heavy Penal Court.

Lawyer Turan Ece then took the issue to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). In a written correspondence dated March 20, 2013, the ECtHR asked whether the case file which was closed with a decision of non-prosecution was taken to the civil court or not.

Bones could not be found

Following this ECtHR judgment, lawyer Ece applied to the Çatak Civil Court of Peace on April 26, 2013. A lawsuit was filed at the Çatak Civil Court of Peace upon this application.

After an excavation in the mass grave area, it was understood that most of the bones belonging to 22 people were removed from the grave and only five percent of the bones could be found. It was revealed that the bones were brought to another mass grave in the triangle of Van-Hakkari-Şırnak before the examination.

The bones that were found were sent to the İstanbul Forensic Medicine Institution.

Forensic Institution refused to examine the bones

The Forensic Medicine Institution sent back the bones without doing the requested identification, which "hurt the families," according to the petition submitted to the Court of Cassation.

After the institution's response and due to the fact that the possibility of DNA identification of the remains was very low, families gave up their request.

In the hearing on July 28, 2015, the families demanded the bones should be taken to the mass grave in Fareşin so that all the remains can be together.

The local court gave a verdict of lack of jurisdiction after continuing the case for two years.

The 20th Civil Chamber of the Court of Cassation ruled on February 15, 2006, that the court had the authority to fulfill the families' request. Five years later, the court ruled that the families should pay a retainer fee of 40,500 lira.

"The court case filed by families for 'identification and submission' became a case for submission after 2015 when the state abstained from identification," lawyer Ece said after the hearing.

"The families' last request was not about identification or submission; it was solely about the delivery of the bones to them so that they could be brought together.

"I mean, we - the plaintiffs - have been demanding since 2015 that the bones kept in the forensic safe of the Çatak courthouse be taken to Fareşin to be brought together." (AS/VK)