845TH WEEK
Saturday Mothers/People: Murderers are free all around
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Saturday Mothers/ People have been asking the fate and whereabouts of the enforced disappeared for 845 weeks. In their online gathering this Saturday (June 5), they asked who killed Kurdish businesspeople Savaş Buldan, Hacı Karay and Adnan Yıldırım on June 3, 1994.
Speaking at the online press statement, Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Co-Chair Pervin Buldan, who is also the spouse of late businessperson Savaş Buldan, said that "the Kurdish businesspeople were only some of the people abducted and tortured in Turkey in the 1990s."
Touching upon the policy of impunity for enforced disappearances and unsolved murders, Pervin Buldan said, "Murderers are free all around. If there is still - at least a bit of - conscience and justice in this country, the law that is not put into action while the murderer of thousands of people is there shows how rotten the judiciary in this country is. The ones who govern the country should know this: We will struggle until we ensure that the perpetrators of identified murders are put on trial."
Adnan Yıldırım's daughter Leyla Yıldırım also noted that "her father and the ones accompanying him had been taken into custody by the people identifying themselves as police officers" and "the murders had been committed within the knowledge and with the cooperation of the state."
"These are political murders. These murders were addressed by being criminalized and the murderers have been acquitted," said Yıldırım. Referring to former Interior Minister Mehmet Ağar, she added, "Mehmet Ağar's acquittal is apparently his return ticket to the field. The state - of course - does not say, 'We are responsible for this.' It will keep feeding murderers like Ağar."
'They said, "We will interrogate and release"'
This week's statement for the press was read out by Rezzan Karaman on behalf of the Saturday Mothers/ People. The statement shared information about the murder of Buldan, Yıldırım and Karay and what happened following their murder. Karaman briefly said the following:
"At 4.30 in the morning on June 3, 1994, businesspeople Savaş Buldan, Adnan Yıldırım and Hacı Karay were taken into custody while they were leaving the İstanbul Yeşilköy Çınar Hotel. They were told that 'they would be released after their statements were taken' and made to get on the cars by people having police IDs, police vests, guns and walkie talkies.
"Their families applied to all authorities right after the incident. But it was rejected that they had been detained. At around 8.15 in the evening on June 4, 1994, their bodies tortured and executed after the interrogation were found by villagers in Bolu/Yığlıca. They did not have their personal belongings such as ID cards, wallets, watches or lighters on them.
'It was indicated in state reports'
"The ones who abducted, interrogated and executed them were indicated in the state reports and statements given at the prosecutor's office. The incident was recounted in detail in court minutes of the trial known as the Ankara Gendarmerie Intelligence and Anti-Terror Unit (JİTEM) case.
"However, in the trial heard by the Ankara 1st Heavy Penal Court, the defendants were acquitted despite evidence, documents and confessions. The families who objected to the ruling lodged an appeal.
"The upper court, the 1st Penal Chamber of the Ankara Regional Court of Justice, has concluded that the ruling of the first court does not comply with the law; it has unanimously reversed the ruling. We demand that this reversal serve not as a move to rectify the obvious mistakes of the judiciary, but as a step taken to ensure that the law really operates."
'Peker pointed at Ağar'
The statement of Saturday Mothers/ People also referred to the recent revelations of Sedat Peker, who is facing a warrant for leading a criminal organization and has been recently sharing some videos about the 'mafia-state-politics' relations in Turkey both in the past and now.
"In the revelations of Peker, it was once again alleged that Savaş Buldan, Adnan Yıldırım and Hacı Karay were disappeared by the organization of the Special Operations Department of the Directorate General of Security in line with the National Security Council decision and upon the instruction of Mehmet Ağar," said Saturday Mothers/People in their statement.
Concluding the statement, Rezzan Karaman, on behalf of Saturday Mothers/ People, called on all institutions to fulfil their duty in the face of these serious accusations. "Moreover, we would like to remind you that the failure to bring this and similar other accusations to a legal and social conclusion deepens not only the decay in state institutions, but the social decay as well."
"No matter how many years pass, we will not give up demanding justice for our all losses, reminding the state that it is obligated to act in line with the universal legal norms and Galatasaray Square, our site of meeting with our losses which has been banned to us for 146 weeks," said the statement of Saturday Mothers/ People further. (RT/SD)