We Will Not Give Up the Struggle for Truth and Justice for Our Disappeared!
17 May 2024
On the occasion of the 17-31 May International Week of the Disappeared, İHD underlines its search for truth, facing the past, and justice.
The history of enforced disappearances in Turkey, which began in 1915 when 250 Armenian intellectuals were taken from their homes and disappeared, turned into a systematic state policy targeting Kurds and dissidents in Turkey during the military coup of September 12 and the 90s, and countless people were taken into custody and subjected to enforced disappearance from their homes, workplaces and streets by public officials or paramilitary elements acting on behalf of the state. All appeals to the authorities by families searching for their relatives have been inconclusive, and the existence of the detainees has been denied. There is no doubt that the state’s impunity policies protecting the perpetrators of enforced disappearances, which target the right to life, legitimized the crimes committed by public officials and paved the way for new violations of rights.
As relatives of the disappeared and human rights defenders, we have been struggling for years to clarify the fate of the disappeared, to shed light on unsolved murders and to ensure justice. The Saturday Mothers’ peaceful vigils, one of the longest-running protests in the world, is about to enter its 1000th week. Further, the protests organized by the Human Rights Association together with relatives of the disappeared and human rights defenders in many cities, especially in Diyarbakır, Batman and Hakkari, demanding “Let the disappeared be found and the perpetrators be tried” are approaching their 800th week.
In these days of talk of normalization in current politics, we see that there is no agenda on the state’s practices that go beyond the “normal” and the law, namely the disclosure of the fate of those disappeared in detention and the provision of justice. However, the institution of politics is primarily responsible for making and implementing decisions to protect the rights of citizens and ensure reconciliation and peace. The violation of the most fundamental right, the right to life, for political reasons, followed by the denial of the right to be buried, the right to a grave and the right to mourn, and the violation of the right to keep the memory of the person alive for those left behind, all reveal the perspective of the political power on the “issue of the disappeared” to date.
Enforced disappearances and unsolved murders are a humanitarian, conscientious and legal issue that cannot be subject to any political debate or calculation. A commission for facing the past and inquiring the truth must be established in order to prevent similar sufferings of the past from happening again, to ensure facing the past and to establish peace and reconciliation. Therefore, political parties with a group in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey must urgently put this issue on their agenda and unconditionally express their opposition to enforced disappearance in detention in the past and take action in accordance with their responsibility.
On the occasion of May 17-31 International Week of the Disappeared, İHD reiterates its just and urgent demands urging the government to:
- Identify the fates of the disappeared and end the policy of impunity that protects the perpetrators,
- Regulate the crime of enforced disappearance in detention as a crime against humanity in the Turkish Penal Code and reopen the investigation and case files closed due to statute of limitations to ensure criminal justice through effective investigations,
- Immediately sign and implement the United Nations International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance,
- Put an end to the restrictions and obstacles targeting the freedom of assembly and expression of the whole society, especially the peaceful vigils staged by the Saturday Mothers, where the relatives of the disappeared express their pain and demands.
As rights defenders, İHD defends everyone’s fundamental rights and freedoms and objects to policies that ignore the law and conscience. And İHD once again states: We will continue to struggle together with the relatives of the disappeared until the last missing person is found, until the last perpetrator is punished.
Human Rights Association