Face the Past for Reconciliation!
3 May 2024
In the peace vigils organized by İHD every month, the relationship between the lack of peace and the problems that have become chronic for many years, such as violations of the right to life due to the ongoing conflict in Turkey, gross violations in prisons, rights violations against women, obstacles to the right to education in mother tongue, restrictions on freedom of thought and expression, and obstacles to freedom of the press, has been revealed. The peace vigils organized by İHD’s branches have been going on for 20 months with the participation of peace advocates and on this occasion, the demand for reconciliation has been voiced more strongly. These peace vigils have increased our motivation and resilience for struggle by enabling us to keep the ties between us and peace advocates alive, to discuss new ways and methods necessary to achieve peace, and to come up with new ideas for achieving peace. Thus, first of all, İHD would like to express its gratitude to everyone who did not leave it alone during the peace vigils.
The demands İHD has been voicing since the day it was founded in general and in the peace vigils in particular, the issues awaiting urgent solutions in Turkey, the dire situation in our lands in terms of democracy and human rights reveal that the burden of rights and peace defenders is getting harder and heavier. The problems created, left unresolved and deepened by the Republic, which was built a hundred years ago, cause the society to enter a pessimistic mood and promise citizens a future full of despair. May is a month of massacres, such as the massacre of workers in İstanbul on 1 May 1977, the May 1980 Çorum Massacre, and 11 May 2013 Reyhanlı massacre, the perpetrators of which have still not been found and tried. The 6 May 1972 execution of Deniz Gezmiş, Hüseyin İnan and Yusuf Aslan is still a bleeding social wound. The picture of the remaining period of the Republic stands before us as a “century of violations” in which violations of rights in all areas of life in the region, unsolved murders and enforced disappearances in custody have become commonplace, tens of thousands of people have lost their lives in intense conflict processes, the prohibition of torture and ill-treatment is constantly violated and the perpetrators are exonerated through the system of impunity. The last century has witnessed gross human rights violations that will never be erased from social memory, such as the Armenian Genocide, the Zilan Creek Massacre, the Pêçar Tenkil Operation, the Dersim Massacre, the September 6/7 Pogrom, the Lice and Roboski Massacres. None of the changing political governments has been able to face these massacres and the state has not taken even the smallest step towards confrontation and apology. The courts, which have been ineffective and reluctant in all of the public cases filed with the claim of punishing these grave crimes committed with the power of the state, have caused the perpetrators to go unpunished by their unlawful decisions.
Likewise, in the aftermath of all military coups or coup attempts in the past century, Kurds and all dissident groups have been subjected to gross rights violations, citizens have faced exile, torture and heavy prison sentences. Throughout this century, the pressure on politicians and intellectuals who fought for the Kurds to attain their fundamental rights and freedoms has constantly increased; unsolved murders, enforced disappearances in custody, imprisonment and exile have been among the most intense threats against politicians, intellectuals and activists. These threats and unlawful practices cause all unresolved issues in Turkey, especially the Kurdish issue, to become gangrenous by leaving them without an interlocutor.
The Human Rights Association believes that the only way for Turkey’s society, which has lost thousands of people through emergency governments and armed conflicts, to heal through reconciliation is to confront the past. It is impossible to create a democratic state and society by transferring the unlawful acts committed by the state in the past to the forgetfulness of social memory. A genuine democracy and a strong will for reconciliation are only possible by facing the past and implementing restorative justice mechanisms. Therefore, İHD calls on the political power to “face the past for reconciliation.”
Human Rights Association