The last links to truth and peace

 
The killing of Tahir Elçi will be a tragic turning point in the lives of anyone in Turkey with an interest in politics, as well as in the country’s political history itself. Following the public outcry at the murder of Hrant Dink, we were starting to feel that, despite everything, we would never again witness another period of unsolved political killings. And then came the murder that took Elçi from us.

I said that the murder would be a turning point in the lives of anyone with an interest in politics, but it will also have a huge impact on the lives of those who aren’t particularly interested.

Tahir Elçi, chair of the Diyarbakır Bar Association, was an extremely symbolic figure. The fact that he was killed in this way, as well as the coincidental or deliberate events leading up to the murder, point to a process that will shape the fate of Turkey’s immediate future.

So let’s start with Tahir Elçi himself. Why is his symbolic importance so great?

While writing this I pause for a moment; I simply cannot believe that such a murder could have taken place, that Turkey can still experience these sinister, “uninvestigable” political murders.
But let’s get back to the question at hand; we were asking why Tahir Elçi was symbolic…

Above all, he pulled himself up out of the most impossible of conditions to become a respected lawyer who worked on important human rights cases and whose opinion was held in high regard. Elçi knew about the violation of rights both from personal experience, having himself suffered torture, and from the victims whose rights he defended. Yet despite this, Elçi never sought “revenge”. On the contrary, he always defended justice through the legal process and within the law…

As a Kurd from Cizre, he dedicated himself to the wrongs that he himself suffered, as well as to those that he witnessed being inflicted against the people around him in the area in which he spent his life.  But, and it’s a big but, while dedicating himself to these issues he always tried to obtain justice for the cases entrusted to him – cases of torture, of unsolved murders, of extrajudicial killings, of abductions/disappearances, and of displacements – through the law. Almost all of the 35 cases that he took to the European Court of Human Rights, and that went as far as the Court’s Grand Chamber, were related to these issues.

And it wasn’t just Elçi; a group headed by lawyers in their 30s, 40s and 50s, lawyers that came before Elçi and those of his generation, have led, and continue to lead, the struggle for human rights in Diyarbakır and the region. In other words, his stance was also symbolic; beyond his own existence, beyond his own person, he represents a political stance against violence.

A reliable source of information 

Since the end of July, when clashes began between the PKK and the security forces, the districts of Cizre, Derik, Lice, Nusaybin, Silvan, and even the Sur neighbourhood in central Diyarbakır, have endured days on end of successive curfews. And of course the same is true for numerous other places in the region…

Without the fastidious and tireless work of the Diyarbakır Bar Association and organisations such as the Human Rights Association, Mazlumder and the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, without their documentation of the events that occurred, and their recording of the number of civilian deaths and injuries, we would not know the full picture, we would remain in the dark, and we would have no answer to the question of “What happened – what is happening – there?” In the past it was always human rights organisations and bar associations in the region that were the main sources of reliable and systematic information, and this tradition continues today.

Documentation and the provision of reliable information is vital. Everybody has a need for channels and organisations that represent no particular political stance and that maintain their impartiality in the provision of information. Indeed, the security forces that are involved in clashes in the region, as well as the state itself are in need of such “clean information”. Without this, we are swamped by “dirty information” of questionable validity that is spread by word of mouth; and here I am talking about information pollution that even misleads journalists who are trying to do their job as objectively as they can.

What’s more, this group of rights advocates of which Elçi was an active member, and which we could call the “human rights community”, brings together a wide range of people; not only lawyers, but everyone from pharmacists to doctors, from members of the business world to academics. As a way of creating a channel for dialogue with the public, this group is based on much stronger social grounds than any artificially created delegation of “wise men”.

These people are autonomous individuals, old and young, from a wide range of fields, who dedicate their spare time to ensuring there is no cover up of the rights violations of the 1990s.

Furthermore, the Diyarbakır Bar Association has made it something of a tradition to bring to trial the rights violations of that dark period of the 1990s, in order to ensure that such things never happen again and to ensure that the victims of that time find justice. Both prior to and during his time as chair of the Bar Association, Tahir Elçi was one of those who never gave up on the fight for justice for the victims of the 1990s.

However, before the murder that took his life, it was his cases that were killed off by successive court decisions that dismissed the cases over recent months. In other words, by the very institution that Elçi had embraced in his fight for rights and for justice.     

The final generation to seek rights through justice?

We all need faith in justice. If a belief in the impossibility and lack of justice through the judiciary takes root, all hopes regarding a peaceful solution to the Kurdish issue will be extinguished. All that will be left is violence.

There is an irony here: the events of the 1990s, the mere mention of which sends a shudder down our spines, are among the most important links on the road to “peace”. If we confront the “truths” of that period, it will be a huge step on the path towards finding a solution to the Kurdish issue. 

For example, let’s take a look at the case of “Temizöz and Others”, portrayed in the media in true tabloid style as the case in which this sentence was uttered: “I have no idea about JİTEM, all I know is the French ‘je t’aime’, which means ‘I love you’.” We know that this case was killed off on 6 November. In the case of the 21 people who were “disappeared” or executed in custody in Cizre from 1993-95, the perpetrator has been declared “unknown”.

Cizre District Gendarmerie Commander, retired Senior Colonel Cemal Temizöz, former Mayor of Cizre and chief village guard Kamil Atağ, Kukel Atağ, Tamer Atağ, Adem Yakin, Fırat Altın (Abdulhakim Güven), Hıdır Altuğ and Burhanettin Kıyak were acquitted following the trial held in Eskişehir.
 
In the final hearing, Temizöz said, “For years I have fought terrorist organisations and lived with their threats. Soros-funded organisations, such as Human Rights Watch, are at the head of the propaganda campaign. They used this as an excuse to pounce on those who were successful in the fight against terrorism, they carried out a character assassination. They announced their findings and went to the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors and the Ministry of Justice. They restored old wells and shot documentaries. I left Cizre in a state where [the football team] Cizrespor could safely play matches. I did what no one thought was possible. I took on the responsibility of the police. This trial has tied my medal of courage and self-sacrifice around my neck like a noose. I call all the witnesses ‘enlisted witnesses’. They cry in unison, ‘I’m afraid. If you let them go they’ll kill us.’”

According to retired Senior Colonel Temizöz, the accusations are a figment of the imagination. All he did was serve the state. The other defendants are of a similar opinion.

On the one hand there is the “truth” of all the painstakingly uncovered evidence; on the other there is the “truth”, approved by the judge, that claims that all of these cases were false.

How are we to solve the existing problems with two diametrically opposed “truths”?

Accused of “first degree murder in an inhuman manner or with torture” in April 1995 in Aşağı Ölçek in the Hakkâri district of Yüksekova, Lieutenant Colonel Kemal Alkan and retired Colonel Ali Osman Akın were acquitted this September.

Retired Brigadier General Mete Sayar, who was tried for the “disappearance” of six villagers in Silopi, was acquitted this July.

Musa Çitil, who was on trial for the extrajudicial killings of 13 people in Mardin from 1992-94, was acquitted in May by Çorum’s 2nd High Criminal Court; in August he was awarded a promotion and appointed Diyarbakır Gendarmerie District Commander, a position that also covers the Mardin area.

From now on it will be difficult for these two “truths” to confront each other within the legal system. Will the lawyers who bear Elçi’s legacy continue this painstaking search? And if so, for how many generations to come?

The heartbreaking thing is that usually the victims’ only wish is for their suffering to be acknowledged, for what really happened to be made known. All they want is the truth. 

Tahir Elçi’s final days…

Tahir Elçi’s final days passed amidst new trials and media polemic, and with the concerns and worries that these brought… On 14 October, he filed a criminal complaint to the Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office against Sedat Peker for “public incitement to hostility and hatred, incitement to and the glorification of crime.” Three days later, Sedat Peker filed a criminal complaint against Elçi for “terrorist propaganda” due to statements he made on a programme aired on CNN Türk.

For those wanting to confront the dark days of the 1990, to expose the perpetrators of the countless unsolved murders, and to see the creators of that darkness brought to justice before the law, the curtain of fog appeared to be lifting. But now however, after the Elçi murder, the fog is settling once more, threatening to cover up the past entirely. 

The murder itself is full of secrets. The second-by-second “expert” analysis of images of the murder only raised great question marks in the minds of many. The fact that it was impossible to investigate the scene of the murder, the attacks on the public prosecutors as they visited the scene, and the lack of political will for transparency have made the curtain of fog even thicker.

Now, after the murder of Tahir Elçi, we face the truth of a new loss. The “uninvestigable” nature of this murder will lead to the complete evaporation of the truth, and will result in everyone believing their own “truth” and set us against each other.

Diyarbakır’s human rights defenders have been deeply shaken and saddened by the loss of Tahir Elçi, but they insist that they will never give up on using the law to fight for rights and seek reparations for the mistakes of the past. Today, it is their skill and the inspiration they provide that will serve as the antidote to that curtain of fog… If they too give in, another of the last links to peace will be broken. Perhaps even the very last…