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Genocide in Kurdistan
January 11-17 1996 edition of the "The European"
The pictures published on this page emerge from the brutal conflict between the Turkish army and the Kurdish minority in the southeast of the country.
They are the least horrifying of a set of 12 pictures passed to
The European which show the
Turkish Goverment Troops
in the act of celebrating in barbarous fashion a victory
over their Kurdish enemy. Having decapitated four Kurdish fighters,
they are seen holding up the heads in triumph.
These gruesome photographs provide some of the defining images of an 11-year war that has been all but forgotten in the dramatic upheavals of the Middle East, the downfall of Soviet power and the Bosnian war.
But if genuine - and The European has been shown
no reason to believe they are not - they are also graphic evidence
to support those in Europe who beleive that
Turkey's
human rights
record makes it unfit for the membership of the European Union
to which it aspires.
It was that human rights record which was at the centre of the
argument when the European Parliament voted on 13 December to
ratify
Turkey's
customs union with the EU, a key step towards
full membership.
MEPs aggreed by 343 to 149 to ratify the agreement, but, as Pauline Green, leader of the majority Socialist bloc, put it, "with sorrow, with heavy hearts and without enthusiasm". Jack Lang, the French Socialist MEP, who was among those who voted against, was simply indignant. He said: "My conscience would not allow me to support an economic accord with a regime of regression and repression."
According to The European's sources, the photographs
were taken in the mountains in southeast
Turkey's
Hakkari province (Northern Kurdistan)
last April. It is a region where
Turkey's
borders converge with
those of Iran and Iraq, a part of the world Kurds consider the
heartland of their native Kurdistan. A state of emergency has
prevailed there for teh past two years.
The pictures are said to show
Turkish Soldiers
of an elite unit called
the Hakkari Mountain Commando Brigade, based in the town of Hakkari,
80km north of the Iraqi border, posing in the snow for snapshots
with the severed heads of four Kurds.
Whether or not the victims were members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the pictures show that some were shot and killed, while others appear to have been taken alive, their clothing torn off and their limbs bound prior to execution and decapitation.
The European has been told that when the
Turkish Soldiers
returned to their base in Hakkari, they made copies of the photographs
to show off their victory to comrades. One of them, whose name
is known to The European and has been passed to
the
Turkish Authorities
, sold the pictures to other soldiers for
up to 100,000 turkish lire ($2) apiece.
One of those soldiers, himself a veteran of the Kurdish campaign but repelled by the callous barbarity shows by the photographs, and by their subsequent dissemination, took the risk of sending them by post to a friend in London.
The friend, a Kurdish electrical engineer who fled Turkey two years ago, passed them on to the Kurdistan Information Center, which represents the strong Kurdish community in London - as recently as 8 January Kurdish demonstrators took workers at a Turkish business centre in the British capital briefly hostage. The information centre then contacted The European. The engineer requested that his identity be kept secret for fear of reprisals against his family still in Turkey. He said he felt it important that the photographs were published, and he insisted that they were genuine.
He said: "My friend was so socked that he felt bound to send them to London. The man who sold him the pictures was not only doing so to make money but to show off." Sympathisers made the point that had the pictures been faked for propaganda purposes, it would have made sense to issue them before the European Parliament vote.
"They are too amateur to have been staged," the man
said. He showed The European a hand-written note
sent with the photographs by his soldier friend. The friend wrote:
"The perpetrators of this savagery were X- X- and the other
Turkish Soldiers
of the Hakkari Mountain Commando Brigade. At that time
he had the photographs duplicated and sold them for between 50,000
and 100,000 lire to make money and to show everyone: 'Look what
we did to those dogs. May this be a lesson to Kurds: you will
end up like this'." (The European has deleted
the name of the soldier given in the letter.)
The pictures are evidence of the pitiless savagery with which
the war is being conducted - by both sides, according to human
rights organisations. Nearly 20,000 people have lost their lives,
according to both western and
Turkish
estimates.
The independent New York-based group Human Rights Watch is indignant
that
Turkey's
partners in Nato have extended generous political
and military support, helping it develop a formidable arms industry
and providing a steady supply of weapons, often free or at reduced
cost. These range from portable weapons to helicopters, tanks
and other vehicles, which it said had been used to raze Kurdish
villages.
That claim in its November report is partly borne out by these
photographs: according to an expert in London, the soldier shown
standing alone holding the head of one victim by the hair in his
left hand is carrying a G-3 rifle. Now standard issue to
Turkish Troops
, the weapon is manufactured under licence in
Turkey
from
the German firm Heckler and Koch. The soldier seen squatting in
the snow with a longer weapon fitted with a telescopic sight is
holding an SVD sniper rifle. A weapon originally manufactured
in former East German weaponry handed to Turkey when Germany was
unified.
Britain, the United States, France and Belgium were also named in the Human Rights Watch report.
Amnestry International, which regularly draws the ire of the
Ankara
authorities with its pronouncements on
Turkey
, said in a recent
report: "Gross violations of human rights are being inflicted
on civilians in southeast
Turkey
. Throughout the rest of the country
the human rights situation is deteriorating."
Many of the
Turkish Soldiers
fighting the war, which costs an
estimated $10 billion annually, are conscripts who serve for 18
months. When a Kurd falls into the hands of the
Turkish Troops
, torture is unavoidable. Execution often follows, unless prisoners
can be used for propaganda purposes.
The Turkish Human Rights Foundation reported that in 1994 alone
202 journalists, writers and publishers were arrested for reports
on the war, and that dozens of newspapers were closed or fined
so heavily that they had to cease publication.
