‘Everyone was afraid, Ferhat showed the courage’

Click to read the article in Turkish / Kurdish

It has been 27 years since journalist Ferhat Tepe, a reporter for Özgür Gündem newspaper, was abducted on July 28, 1993 and found dead on August 4. Tepe was abducted in Turkey's Kurdish-majority Bitlis province on July 28, 1993 and found dead by a fisher on the shore of Lake Hazar in Elazığ, another Kurdish-majority province, on August 4, 1993.

When he lost his life, Tepe was 19 years old. As no steps were taken to find the perpetrators, his family appealed to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).

The ECtHR handed down its ruling on May 9, 2003. It concluded that "no effective or adequate investigation had been conducted into the violation of his right to life" (Article 13 of the ECHR through the Article 2) and "the right to effective domestic remedies" (Article 13) was violated. Turkey was sentenced to pay 14,500 Euro to Tepe family in damages.

In a news story published on bianet on November 24, 2012, İshak Tepe, the father of Ferhat Tepe, said that his son came to know Özgür Gündem when he went to a university preparation course in İstanbul and he started to work there as a reporter there after taking the university entrance exam.

"He was young and enthusiastic. Villages were burned down at that time, people were abducted and killed. Everyone was afraid, Ferhat showed the courage," father Tepe said.

1 million lira in ransom

İshak Tepe also said that when his son Ferhat did not come home on the day of incident, they looked for him everywhere and, as they could not learn anything about his whereabouts, they got concerned:

"At the same night, we got a phone call in early morning hours. Some person who introduced himself as the 'Ottoman Retaliation Brigade' said that they had Ferhat, but did not let me talk to my son."

According to father İshak Tepe, he was asked to pay a ransom of one million lira with the money of the time, close the Democracy Party (DEP) branch, that four people abducted by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) be released and he was asked to not say anything to anyone about it.

Father Tepe said that though they appealed to the Bitlis Security Directorate, Bitlis Governor's Office, Gendarmerie Regimental Command and Public Prosecutor's Office for many times, they all remained fruitless.

He was buried in the cemetery of the nameless

With his several applications and efforts remaining inconclusive till August 8, father Tepe said the following about how they found the deceased body of his son Ferhat Tepe and what happened afterwards:

"On August 8, we got another phone call; the person that I previously talked about said, 'The dead body of your son is in the mortuary of Elazığ State Hospital, go and take him from there.' I did not want to believe what he said, we had a row on the phone for quite a long time.

"My nephew Talat Tepe identified Ferhat from his photos in Elazığ. The Elazığ Chief Public Prosecutor's Office said that the dead body was unclaimed and he was laid to rest three days ago. While the deceased body of my son was being taken from the Cemetery of the Nameless, my wife Zübeyda was there, they had just buried him in a makeshift grave.

"When the body of Ferhat was found, he only had his underwear on him, his clothes were on the shore. The fisher informed the gendarmerie, the body was taken to the Sivrice Prosecutor's Office, an autopsy report was prepared and sent to Elazığ on the same day.

"About Ferhat's death, they told us, 'He did not know how to swim, he apparently entered the lake and drowned.' No detailed post-mortem examination was conducted, there was only an expression of '...due to getting breathless...' There were, in fact, signs suggesting that his hands had been tied and he had been battered before he died."

* You can click here to read other articles in the "Killed Journalists and Impunity" series (in Turkish)

(NÖ/SD)