Message from Ragıp Zarakolu and the Human Rights Association of Turkey
NOW, AT THIS VERY MOMENT: HURŞİT KÜLTER IS UNDER THE RISK OF BEING FORCEFULLY DISAPPEARED!
A case of forced disappearance is happening day by day before our eyes at this very moment – a case that meets all criteria cited in the UN International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance which Turkey refused to sign but obviously a party to it under its international obligations.
His family and colleagues haven’t heard of Hurşit Külter, a member of the Şırnak Provincial Executive Board of the Democratic Regions Party, since his detention on May 27, 2016. A war is ongoing in Turkey where all known national and international human rights norms are being violated to the extreme. This period has been marked with unimaginable atrocities by Turkish Armed Forces and Special Operations Teams: extrajudicial execution of hundreds of civilians, towns razed to the ground by artillery, mortar, and other heavy armour, families denied the right to retrieve their beloved ones’ dead bodies for months, civilians trapped in basements and burnt alive by chemical weaponry, people machine gunned while carrying their wounded to the hospital.
What’s more important is that this process is going on. Detention, and then arrest of elected mayors, elected members of city/district councils, and local leaders of political parties, sometimes by police/army raids into their homes, taking away people arbitrarily while walking on the street, or journalists while following an incident have become daily, ordinary, utterly normalised incidents. Under such circumstances Hurşit Külter, according to two eyewitnesses’ statements to the press, was taken into custody by Special Operations teams in Şırnak on 27th May. He was put in an armoured vehicle and taken to the Gümüştepe district Special Operations Directorate under the Şırnak Provincial Public Security Directorate.
In Şırnak where an indefinite round‐the‐clock curfew was declared on 14th March 2016, the last time his family heard of him was on 27th May when he called his father, saying that soldiers had surrounded the house to take him away and his family should inquire about his fate thereafter. Soon after this conversation from the twitter account BÖF@Tweet_Guneydogu, said to be owned by the security staff from the team which took him under custody, a tweet was sent stating that Hurşit Külter was in their hands and under interrogation at that moment.
On 5th June 2016 Dicle News Agency reported that a “reliable source” informed that Hurşit Külter had been kept for seven days at the Gümüştepe Special Operations Directorate, then taken to the 23rd Gendarmerie Border Division Command and was being kept there up until then. Another report was published by the same agency on 10th June where a village guard who insisted on anonymity for his safety, stated that he overheard a conversation among a group of army officers who were talking about Hurşit Külter, saying that he was under torture and if he continued to refuse to confess in front of the press he would be blown up in a building.
Upon Külter family’s request the Human Rights Association Turkey (HRA) appealed to the Foreign Ministry, Ministry of Justice, Şırnak Governor’s Office, Şırnak Provincial Public Security Directorate, 23rd Gendarmerie Border Division Command and Military Prosecutor’s Office asking about Hurşit Külter’s whereabouts. However no respond was received since the day of his detention. All the more alarmingly, the relevant authorities deny that Külter was under custody by the security forces. The only official statement made by the authorities is the answer received from Şırnak Governor’s Office, saying “The person in question has not been put under custody by any of our security units”.
In violation of all law and international conventions Turkey is party to, authorities ban HRA lawyers’ entry to Şırnak on grounds of ongoing curfew, and for this reason they can only try to intervene from neighbouring provinces. Due to preposterous, incredible, unthinkable reckless denial of all rights and laws, they cannot go to the place where Külter was seen for the last time, interview the witnesses, and gather evidences about the case.
We, the families of those who are forcefully disappeared and the rights advocates as the witnesses of these crimes, are gravely concerned about the Hurşit Külter’s fate. We are concerned, because we are the most immediate witnesses of the fact that he is under the threat of enforced disappearance or extrajudicial execution as a result of his being secretly imprisoned with the intent of placing him outside the protection of the law. We are concerned because, between 1991‐99 when the war in the Kurdish provinces was at its highest, the number of persons forcefully disappeared, and only those which can be recorded, was 520.
Turkey’s both far and recent history is stained with crimes of enforced disappearances. We are concerned because, instead of acting on Külter family’s and HRA’s appeals, starting investigation into the matter and make good use of the testimonies of the witnesses, government authorities who are under the obligation of taking all measures to protect Külter’s right to life, presume the truthfulness of the statements of those who are in fact the suspects of this potential enforced disappearance case and take these statements as basis when answering questions. They evade taking any action to meet our demand that all necessary administrative and legal investigations should be started in order to secure Hurşit Külter’s right to life.
Enforced disappearance, being a crime against humanity, is in fact a crime committed against the human family and human dignity. We believe that there are credible signs of intent to forcefully disappear Hurşit Külter, a Kurdish politician, and therefore call on every responsible individual and organisation to do their best to mobilise the international community against the possibility of such a crime against human family in Turkey.
Ragıp Zarakolu
Journalist, Co-founder Human Rights Association of Turkey,
Nominee of Nobel Peace Prize 2012
