"Turkey Must Apologise to Relatives of Disappeared"

Two weeks of activities protesting against the many disappearances in police or gendarmerie custody in Turkey ended with a Justice Tribunal, organised by the International Committee against Disappearances (ICAD).

Held at Istanbul's Bilgi University Dolapdere campus on 31 May, the tribunal called for an apology by the state for all disappearances, as well as the trial of generals, police officers and politicians on duty during the period of most intensive fighting with the PKK.

Şahin Tümüklü, a member of the tribunal, called for the following in a statement:

* The one-sided understanding of massacre and loss in history books, which has been identified with the Armenian forced migration, should change.

* An independent delegation should be formed to identify the number of disappeared people and their stories. Ottoman and Turish archives should be opened, and mass graves and graveyards of the poor should be found and opened.

* Forensic Medical Institutes should open their records, and the DNA test applications of relatives of disappeared people should be accepted. Military and police records should also be published, and a War Crimes Tribunal should be formed in order to try those responsible for the disappearances.

* Relatives of missing persons should be compensated for their material and psychological loss. Those who attacked and burned down villages and those who ordered these attacks should be identified and punished.

* The fate of people who disappeared in detention or were buried in mass graves needs to become known. Those ordering and carrying out murders must be punished.

* Disclosures from the Ergenekon file have brought to light several "state secrets", i.e. crimes. They must become court cases.

* The state of the Turkish Republic must apologise to families.

* The state must accept the Statement on the Protection against Enforced Disappearances, accepted by the United Nations' general assembly on 18 December 1992, as domestic law.

* Police custody should be abolished; rather, people taken in by the police should be brought to a judge directly.

The statement further called for the lifting of immunity for anyone responsible and for the politicians of the period between 1991 and 1996 to be tried. The list of people they accuse includes:

Veli Küçük (known as the founder of the clandestine gendarmerie intelligence unit JITEM, said to be responsible for hundreds of murders), Arif Doğan and Levent Ersöz (also from JITEM), Chiefs of Staff Doğan Güreş, Hüseyin Kıvrıkoğlu, Hakkı Karadayı, Hilmi Özkök, Yaşar Büyükanıt, Presidents Kenan Evren, Turgut Özal (deceased) and Süleyman Demirel, Prime Ministers Mesut Yılmaz, Tansu Çiller and Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan, former Deputy PM Murat Karayalçın, Ministers of the Interior Abdülkadir Aksu, İsmet Sezgin, Mehmet Ağar and Meral Akşener, Governor of the Emergency Law Region (OHAL) Hayri Kozakçıoğlu, Generals Hasan Kundakçı, İlker Başbuğ, Hikmet Köksal, Şener Eruygur, Hurşit Tolon, Mete Sayar, Korkut Eken and İsmet Deliyıldız. (BÇ/AG)