CHILDREN'S DAY IN TURKEY

On April 23rd, Seyfi Turan a 14 year old Kurdish boy was severely beaten by Turkish police in Hakkari on International Children's Day. Seyfi came from a Kurdish family forced by the military to leave their village in 1994. The family received no assistance from the state, and Seyfi's father has been unemployed since.




Here's the story from Hurriyet:

Child beating caught on tape

ANKARA - The Hakkari Governor’s Office and Police Department have launched inquiries into the conduct of a police officer caught on video hitting a 14-year-old boy with the butt of his rifle during a demonstration in the southeastern province Thursday.

The incident involving the minor sparked outrage around the country.

While the police appointed two senior inspectors to the case, the Governor’s Office announced Friday that the police officer was suspended pending an administrative inquiry, reported Anatolia news agency.

The Governor’s Office released a statement that said: "The police intervened in some of the illegal demonstrations and rock throwing in several neighborhoods of Hakkari. During the intervention, the wounding of a citizen as a result of one security official’s impulsive actions was received with distress. The officer in question has been suspended and an inquiry has been launched against those responsible."

Hakkari Governor Muammer Türker told the Anatolia news agency that he was following the medical condition of the boy and those responsible would face administrative and disciplinary measures.

Hit repeatedly
The boy, 14-year-old Seyfi Turan, was seen in the video being repeatedly hit by a police officer with the butt of his rifle. The boy sustained serious injuries and was fist taken to a local hospital and then sent to the Van Yüzüncü Yol University Hospital in the province of Van.

The father of the boy, Mehmet Turan, told the Doğan news agency about his son’s injuries. Speaking in Kurdish because he did not know Turkish, the father said: "They told me the police beat my son. They cracked his head. He was sent to Van from Hakkari. He is fine now but he was beaten badly." Doctors at the hospital said the boy was doing OK but would have to spend another 10 days at hospital. Meanwhile, Van Gendarmerie Commander Lt. Gen. Yurdaer Olcan visited the boy Friday.

There is more commentary by Azadixwaz

BELOW is an excerpt from an article in Zaman about the prosecution of Kurdish children:

Instead of juvenile courts, they are being tried in special authority high penal courts set up after the State Security Courts (DGM) were dissolved and changes in the Law on Terrorism in 2006 made it possible to try minors aged 15-18 in these courts. Recently, two minors were sentenced to 21 years imprisonment in Adana after taking part in pro-Kurdish Nevruz events in Gaziantep on March 21. And on April 22, the Diyarbakır 6th High Penal Court handed down prison terms to six minors, with sentences ranging from six to 11 years.

“I can’t sleep tonight because the court will make a decision on my 15-year-old son. He wanted to be a lawyer, but he won’t be able to. He won’t be able to realize his dreams. He will be a criminal from now on and he will question the punishment given to him as a result of throwing a stone. How is the night going to turn into morning and how is the judge going to decide? Nobody knows the answer except the 6th High Penal Court judge and prosecutor,” said Arif Akkaya, father of H. Akkaya, who is being tried at the Diyarbakır court on charges of terrorism.

The court was supposed to make judgments on six juveniles on April 23, but since this day is a national holiday, the verdict came a day earlier and the minors were given prison sentences of six to 11 years.

There are many juveniles in a similar position in Turkey. According to figures released by Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Şahin, 2,469 cases were opened in 2006-07 in relation to terrorism crimes and 835 minors are being prosecuted.

Punishment for Success DTP leaders arrested/ Mehdi Zana

Above: Selma Irmak and Kameran Yuksek: Among the over 50 DTP members arrested by the Turkish State in revenge for the DTP's success in recent elections.

On April 14 the Turkish Government arrested over 50 people with associations to the DTP, as well as employees of the privately run Kurdish TV station GUN TV in Diyarbekir:

Quoting an article from Hurriyet:

DTP deputy chairs, Kamuran Yuksek and Bayram Altun, were taken in for questioning in Diyarbakir, where police also detained the chief editor of private television channel Gun TV, the agency said. The party's deputy chairwoman, Selma Irmak, was detained in the southeastern province of Mardin, it added.

Seracettin Irmak, a lawyer for jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, and Alican Unlu, the deputy mayor of the eastern province of Tunceli, were also among those detained on Tuesday.

Again, as an American it is not easy to understand the logic of what has happened, but you have to imagine that the Mayor of Los Angeles has his offices spied on, his phones tapped, and that the government is constantly trying to charge him for offenses against the state. Imagine a city council followed, harassed threatened, email hacked, phones tapped. Imagine a national government thwarting a local government when it tries to supply municipal services for people: healthcare, job training for women, or god forbid, garbage collection. And imagine that when a corrupt governing party loses big time, in spite of its attempts at bribery (giving away free appliances) its party members are trounced in elections, and after its losses it repsonds by having its rival party members and leaders arrested and charged with terrorism. What has just happened in Turkey is not a new thing, but the continuation of a long policy of criminalizing Kurdish leaders who try to serve their people through civil means.

I'm going to post a long quote from "Prison No. 5" by Mehdi Zana, former Mayor of Diyarbekir:

"In 1977 elections took place at the city hall in Diyarbakir. At the time, Diyarbakir was the ninth largest city in Turkey, with approximately 225,000 inhabitants: today it has more than 1.5 million. I was elected from fourteen candidates, with about 54 percent of the vote- two times more than the candidate from the incumbent party of Bulent Ecevit. The Turkish authorities, the prefect, and the military commander were appalled by my election, but I was elected democratically.

During the three years that I headed the municipality, I did my best to ameliorate the situation of the population. I did so despite the hostility of the local and national Turkish authorities who subjected the city to a genuine economic blockade: There were no funds, no subsidies generally agreed on by the public authorities for equipment and urban development. This would not do! I ended the blockade by speaking to the National Federation of Elected Republicans and Socialists in France. Its president, the late Hubert Dubedout, mayor of Grenoble, in France, and its secretary general, Antoine Blanca, who later became the adjunct secretary general of the United Nations, welcomed me with open arms. "

Zana goes onto describe how the Mayors from several cities in France worked together to donate thirty buses and trucks for the city of Diyarbakir:

"In a few weeks in an extraordinary convoy of thirty buses and trucks left France and crossed Europe to come to the aid of Diyarbakir."... "The Turkish prime minister at the time, Bulent Ecevit, called it treason and ranted and raved that "Western imperialism is trying to divide our country."


Zana goes onto describe the aftermath of the coup of 1980 and his arrest:

"Through a plan established long before, the army and police started arresting, according to a system of concentric circles, members of parliament, ministers, heads of political parties, unions, municipal governments, academics, legal or illegal militant organizations, and journalists-- in brief, all elements that seemed undesirable and harmful to the ideal Kemalist Republic. All of these militant turks dreamed of the "golden age" of the 1920's and 1930's when, under the "enlightened government of Ataturk," the country government by a single party with an eternal single head, a single official ideology,when everyone appeared obedient, patriotic, and necessarily Turkish. All those who, like the Kurds, leftists, or Muslim partisians, did not fit into the mold suffered the punishment they deserved: prison, massacre, and deportation. Once again the generals had returned in aneffort to restore that golden age. Misfortune befell the rest ofus poor thinking infidels, castoffs of the official religion. On September 24th 1980, twelve days after the coup, I was arrested along with other Kurdish friends."

Zana continues, describing torture that goes on for days:

"First the Falaka, an old torture that has proved itself. They administer it with a stick or a bat on the soles of the feat. Eery time I fainted, they splashed water on me and resumed the torture. After beating me hard on the soles of my feet they threw me on the ground and stomped on my back one by one, there were a good forty of them. Then came the insults: "You fag, I'll shit on your face..." Finally they took me to another room where they hung me up by my arms, nude, and attached electric wires to my genitals and anus. Whenthey turned on the current my whole body would tremble; they call this "doing the plane." WhenI fainted, they would wake me up by kicking me with their boots. Their questions: names, information about my organization, my contacts. "If you want, we will leave you alone; you only have to sign this paper!"
This treatment lasted fifteen days. Every night at around one o 'clock in the morning, a Kurdish guard came to take off the blindfold that I wore continuously and to give me something to drink. His presence was good for me. Then it started again, especially the electrical torture. one day I heard the words "Mehdi Zana, what is this ignominy? Do you see what state you are in?" I recognizedthe voice of the general who commanded Diyarbakir. I did not respond. He started again: Do you see hwat you had done to yourself?"... I responded "Sometimes you are at the bottom, sometime you are on top."

Zana goes on for many paragraphs describing torture, confinement to coffin like cells, hearing the sounds of women being tortured, sleep deprivation and endless physical humiliation. Finally:

"They interrogated me about my trip to Europe in 1979 in order to obtain aid for my city. They wanted to know whom I had met and what I had done. When I was the mayor, the city of Diyarbakir had recieved the buses from France as a gift. Whatwere the interests of the Europeans? Why were they interested in the Kurds? They returned to these questions endlessly: Why had we recieved this aid? With what goal? What was our relationship with France?"

I am afraid for the people who have been arrested on the 14th. There is little information about them.

Below I am reprinting Bawer Cekir's entire article from Bianet:

Operation Targeting the DTP: 40 People Detained
Simultaneous operations in 13 provinces have led to the detention of 40 people, among them leading members of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party. The searches continue.
BİA News Center - Diyarbakır
14-04-2009

Bawer ÇAKIR
Following the decision of the Diyarbakır Public Prosecutor’s Office, police operations were carried out in 13 provinces this morning (14 April).

27 places were raided by the police, including the homes of leading members of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP) and the private Kurdish Gün TV channel in Diyarbakır.

Forty people have been taken into custody after operations in the provinces of Diyarbakır, Van, Tunceli, Antalya, Adana, Mardin, Gaziantep, Elazığ, Bitlis, Aydın, Ankara, Batman and Şırnak.

One of them is Selma Irmak, former vice chair of the DTP.

According to information that bianet received from Gün TV, a search warrant related to channel director Ahmet Birsin led to materials being confiscated.

The teams started their operations at 4 am. Apart from DTP homes and Gün TV, the guest houses of Greater Diyarbakır’s Municipality and Batman Municipality were also searched, as well as the Southeast Anatolia Project Union building in the Yenişehir district of Diyarbakır.

Among those taken into custody are:

DTP vice chair Kamuran Yüksek, DTP vice chair Bayram Altun, DTP vice chair Selma Irmak, PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan’s lawyers Seracettin Irmak, Ebru Günay and Şinasi Tur, and Batman municipality building director Heval Erdemli.

"Worrying and disappointing"
Speaking to CNN Türk, Diyarbakır Bar Association President Mehmet Emin Aktar said, “Such an operation is worrying. We do not know what evidence was used. I see this as a negative development. Of course, after the DTP won a serious victory in the local elections in the area, and as the party has been considered the legal representation of Kurds in the process for a solution to the Kurdish question, this has destroyed hopes for a peaceful solution.”

According to the Dicle News Agency (DİHA), Zübeyde Çoğaç, municipal councillor in the Yüksekova district of Hakkari was taken into custody after a police raid on her house. She is said to have been taken to the district gendarmerie command.

The agency has further reported that 16 people have been taken into cusotyd in Mardin following raids on homes. These people, who are expected to be taken to Diyarbakır, are: Rıdvan Bakay, Mehmet Arı, İlhami Ceylan, Cuneyt Sinci, Mehmet Özgün, Remzi Usanmaz, Mesut Haskul, Vahap Ete, Mehmet Erde, Nezir Bingöl, Abdullah Çelik, Metin Kaymaz, Seyfettin Ay, Mehmet Halepoğlu, Günay Bayraktar and Abdullah Karakuş (BÇ/AG)

It would be funny if it wasn't so true

From the Alliance for Kurdish Rights:

Musa Anter's Memoirs

I have been able to read very little of Musa Anter's writing because so little of it is translated into English, however there are three web pages with excerpts from his memoirs that reveal this gentle, intelligent man and his observations of both a lost world and the formation of a new brutal regime. This man had a remarkable life and tragic death. His mother, although iliterate, became the Mayor of their village near Mardin, and he became a witness to many pivotal events in the formation of the new Repbulic of Turkey. A "Republic" which based it's existence on the denial of history and the presence of many cultures that lived within it's boundries.

This is from excerpt 1. Link to the full excerpt is here.

He was shot dead in 1992. Musa Anter was killed by gunshots on 20 September 1992 in Diyarbakir, where he was attending a festival, organised by the local council, to which he had been invited. Orhan Miroglu, a friend who was accompanying him, was seriously wounded. The police found 13 cartridges at the scene of the shooting. An autopsy carried out on the day of death showed that Musa Anter had been hit by five bullets and had died as a result of his injuries.

He was shot dead in 1992. Musa Anter was killed by gunshots on 20 September 1992 in Diyarbakir, where he was attending a festival, organised by the local council, to which he had been invited. Orhan Miroglu, a friend who was accompanying him, was seriously wounded. The police found 13 cartridges at the scene of the shooting. An autopsy carried out on the day of death showed that Musa Anter had been hit by five bullets and had died as a result of his injuries.

The village I lived in was called Zivenge which in Kurdish means "winter place". This was no sports and leisure area the like of which people from rich nations frequent. The caves were where the flocks were kept in the winter. There are many places in my country named Zivenge, but each takes its tribe's name as well. So ours would be called Zivenge Tamika, while others were called Zivenge Habizbinya, Zivenge Bohtan etc. There have always been some people from the caves who were interested in education. The famous Kurd, Mele Ehmede Cizri's literature was translated from Kurdish into Arabic by Mele Ehmede Zivinge. He later became a religious leader for the Syrian town of Kamisli. For 7,000 years our caves were known as Zivinge but now without consulting the inhabitants the brutal government, just as if they were naming a cat or a dog, renamed our caves Eski-Magara (Old cave ). So after 65 years I suddenly became a resident of Old-caves. It is interesting to reflect that when Bulgaria allegedly started changing Turkish names to Bulgarian there was an uproar as being against human rights. I wonder if the Bulgarians learnt this trick from the Turks? It was not just the caves that changed names, but again without asking the Kurdish inhabitants, village were given Turkish names as were cities, so that, Diyaribakir became Diyarbakir, Elaziz- Elazig, Dersim-Tunceli and Samrah became Mazidagi etc. Some cities were allowed to keep their original names but Turkish names were added to these. I do not know why but they forgot to change the name of Mardin city, I suppose they could have called it Poor Mardin! The village of Old-cave is situated in the middle of the plain where the mountains of Tur Abdin meet the plain which stretches to Iraq and Syrian. It consisted of 20 houses and this area had been inhabited by humans through four geological ages..

Some parts of the caves are natural while others are man made. There is no drinking water but rain water which is collected in tanks for use. An attempt was made to pipe water from Stelile (new name Akarsu) but it was unsuccessful. Even as a child I can remember whenever the water ran out, people going to neighbouring villages to collect water at standpipes. The village's income comes somehow from an agriculture sans water. Lentils, wheat, chick peas and barley are grown. Some land grows hairy cucumber. melon. water melon, but one of the most important crops is Soya-bean (gene and oil from this plant is used for lighting as it has been for centuries. Our village has very big caves, making it suitable for cattle breeding. There are no strangers in the village. Our farm was the village. When the Ottomans first came our village was registered in my great grandfather's name Antere Mihoteze. Since then the family has grown and divided between our relatives. The village is 25 km north-west of the town of Nusaybin. There.are signs that this area once had vineyards but today you would not be able to find a single grapevine. There are still 8 barrels for squeezing grapes and the discovery of so much broken pottery around indicates that wine was made here even before Islam. After the arrival of Islam, people changed to making heavy syrup (grape juice boiled to a sugary solid grapemolasses) Other people living here who were not families were allowed any land that we had no use for. These people would work for us and take orders from us and would also give us one tenth of whatever they produced. It was all done in an agreeable and happy way. When the tractor arrived everything began to change, with people becoming more selfish and leaving the area. We called the people who worked for us neighbours. Our neighbours went to the towns and cities to work and found suffering there, but because they are still our friends whenever we meet we hug and talk about the good old days. My experiences with my family and our life together helped me be successful at school and that was perhaps the reason I wanted to become a writer; my family were small landowners. Traditionally a landowner's income is like a family charity and my father and mother, like their ancestors, carried on this tradition. We used to have an area with a room just like an hotel. Whoever came to visit the village stayed in this room free of charge. As well as visitors, troubadours or religious people would call regularly and were provided for. Some of these visitors played traditional Kurdish music on traditional instruments and also told stories, while the religious singers would have their own special instruments to accompany their singing. They would also sing the classical songs of Kurdish poets. I now know that these songs were taken from the poetry of Melaye Cizire and Feqiye Teyran. These songs told of the brutal treatment and the genocide that the Ottoman and later on the Republic (Turkey) inflicted on the Kurds. They told of the 1925 Sheikh Said uprising and of the women losing their husbands, children and possessions. People came from the towns of Lice, Kulp, Dicle and the city of Diyarbakir to take refuge in our caves. My mother and the other villagers fed them. Amongst the refugees was an old women called Xeco who had lost her husband, two sons and two son-in-laws in the Sheikh Said uprising. 65 years later I can still hear her tell her story with a voice full of bitterness and choking with tears. It left a lasting impression.

Excerpt 2 describes the effect of the ban on the Kurdish language on ordinary people around Mardin.

To help you understand the situation, I will give you another example of the difficulties arising from the prohibition of speaking Kurdish.

The villagers used to take wood to the city to sell. They transported it by donkey. They would sell the firewood for about 5060 kurus (pennies). If the donkey and the saddle was in good condition, they could sell it for 5-6 lira. To make the donkey go while riding it, a Kurd would say 'Co'. Villagers speaking nothing but Kurdish when they arrived at the city would say 'Co' and the soldiers would stop them and fine them on the spot for speaking Kurdish. Unable to speak Turkish, the Kurdish villager would attempt to explain to the soldiers in Kurdish and thus the fine built up and up.

A relative of my mothers was set up by the soldiers and in order to pay the fine he sold his firewood and donkey. He received five Turkish lira for them but his fine was 12 lira so he was beaten up and put in a cell for two days. Three and a half months later. when the tax collectors came to our village, they demanded the remaining seven lira outstanding on the fine. If he did not pay up, they would seize his house and belongings. My uncle managed to pay the fine by selling some of his sheep. Such incidents were part of our ordinary, normal daily life. If records of fines had been kept in Mardin city, it would be possible to find many such cases as this. I have many memories of those five years. But the one that really impressed me was  this: In our school were the sons of Eliye Ehmed tribal leaders called Ehmed and Senanik. In 1932 in Omeriyan town, there had been an incident and a squad of soldiers arrived in the town from Diyarbakir city. They had been sent on a clean up operation against the Kurds. Most of the men of the village ran away to the mountains. Eli agha, his two brothers and 14 men were confronted by the soldiers in Tuxip mountain. The soldiers opened fire and at the end of the conflict had killed and wounded the Kurds. The soldiers then proceeded (regardless oi whether they were dead or alive) to chop off the Kurds' heads leaving the bodies.

The story goes that when Ehmede Drei was arrested and then his head was chopped off, he managed to run a short distance without his head!

The soldiers put all seventeen heads into a bag and proceeded to display them to the people as if they were melons. The heads were finally taken to Stelile (Akarsu) where a priest (imam) washed all the heads and put the landowner with his two brothers into one bag and the rest of the 14 heads in another bag and buried them in the graveyard next to our garden.

The third installlment is here. This is a description of Musa Anter's murder taken from the web page of the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights:

He was shot dead in 1992. Musa Anter was killed by gunshots on 20 September 1992 in Diyarbakir, where he was attending a festival, organised by the local council, to which he had been invited. Orhan Miroglu, a friend who was accompanying him, was seriously wounded. The police found 13 cartridges at the scene of the shooting. An autopsy carried out on the day of death showed that Musa Anter had been hit by five bullets and had died as a result of his injuries.