Amid vicious circle-like heated debates over government efforts to design a new civilian constitution to replace the existing 1982 Constitution, which was drafted following the Sept. 12, 1980 coup, a group of people from the Federation of 78'ers, the 78'er Foundation Initiative, Tükenmez Publishers, the İstanbul branch of the Human Rights Association (İHD), the Democratic Society Party (DTP), the Freedom and Solidarity Party (ÖDP), the Socialist Democracy Party (SDP) and the Marmara branch of the Pir Sultan Abdal Association marked the 27th anniversary of the Sept. 12 coup in front of the notorious Diyarbakır Prison, declaring their will for establishing a "Commission for Justice and Researching the Truth on Diyarbakır Prison."
Between 1981 and 1984, 34 people died and hundreds were handicapped as the result of ill treatment and torture, according to accounts provided by the initiative. An undetermined number of people, both prisoners and their relatives and friends, especially peers of those young prisoners, have been irreparably and psychologically impacted, with a dark shadow still hanging over their lives. Twenty of those people were tortured to death, five died on hunger strikes, five burned themselves and four of them hanged themselves in protest of the circumstances. A silent mourning is still going on in various provinces in the region.
Among those who marked this year’s Sept. 12 in front of Diyarbakır Prison, there were mournful old women along with the sons of some of those who were beaten and tortured simply because they couldn’t speak Turkish with their sons during limited visiting times. Their sorrow was explained long ago in Nobel winner Harold Pinter’s short play titled “Mountain Language.” Hundreds of pages of witnesses’ statements have been collected in the files of human rights organizations during the last two decades, with some of these statements having attained a mythical status among a considerable population. Human rights activists say physical, sexual and mental abuses that inmates suffered cannot be considered solely as human rights violations, but actually crosses the line into “crimes against humanity.”
Tanks that rolled over Diyarbakır twice
“The brutality once experienced there was extremely oppressive so that even going on the mountains was a moderate response for those eventually released from the prison,” Celalettin Can, a spokesperson for the 78’er Foundation Initiative, says during an interview with Sunday’s Zaman. The initiative was established by victims of the 1980 coup, most of whom were young university students at the time, and his mention of “going on the mountains” was actually a reference to joining the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The PKK’s separatist campaign dates back to 1984 and has caused the deaths of tens of thousands of both civilians and soldiers. A conflict resulting in so many casualties means almost every individual has been personally affected by the conflict. “I’ve noticed that one reason why the PKK was able to recruit followers was the savagery experienced at Diyarbakır Prison. The military tanks rolled over Turkey once during the Sept. 12, 1980 military coup, but those tanks rolled over Diyarbakır twice. The prison conditions changed both the context and the quality of the Kurdish issue. We need to face this fact. The investigation of Diyarbakır Military Prison will be an important milestone on the way to peace,” Can says.
Residents of Diyarbakır could never understand and or believe in the silence over their grievances, Can stresses, in an apparent reference to the immediate post-coup period when nobody dared to speak aloud about Diyarbakır Prison. But even now those who criticize the government for acting inappropriately in their ongoing efforts to draft a new civilian constitution feel the need to highlight that they are not in favor of the existing Constitution since they don’t want to be perceived as junta supporters. Yet for a large majority of them, the darkest page of Sept. 12 is still a cursed one that shouldn’t even be mentioned, wishing that every wound related to that page will then be healed.
A landmark symbol of Sept. 12
Mithat Sancar, a professor of public law at Ankara University, recently published a book titled “Facing up the Past-From the Culture of Forgetting to the Culture of Remembering” in which he calls Diyarbakır Prison “a landmark symbol” of the Sept. 12 coup that has not been sufficiently taken into consideration by the pubic. “Diyarbakır Prison is not only the wildest chapter of the Kurdish issue, but it is also the wildest face of Sept. 12. It is certain that the horrible incidents encouraged people to join the armed fight [launched by the PKK]. The fury among Kurdish people due to Diyarbakır Prison has long remained one of the most important resources for the PKK. The silence about this truth makes it graver. Making people forget is a fundamental tactic of Sept. 12,” Sancar tells Sunday’s Zaman. In his latest book, Sancar outlines the tools and methods of facing up to the past -- such as exposing truths before the public, apologizing to the public, trial and commemoration -- within the framework of experiences in Europe, Latin America and South Africa, and discusses both difficulties and opportunities offered by these tools and methods. “Starting with Diyarbakır is an appropriate move because in these kinds of issues related to questioning of a certain era, starting from a concrete point is preferred. It brings a more systematic effort,” he says.
When asked about the ongoing effects of Diyarbakır Prison among even the youth who were not born when the incidents took place, Sancar stresses that “certain incidents are mythicized all around the world, not only in Turkey, when they are covered.”
The more dangerous fact is that this kind of myth-making leads to legitimatization of an unfair cause most of the time, he adds, in apparent reference to the way Diyarbakır Prison is used by and in separatist jargon. “Exposing the truth will make us able to judge the mentality and practice of a certain period of time, while it will also help with overcoming a deep trauma which is turned into a legend and made the basis for a certain cause,” he explains.
Statute of limitations and crimes against humanity
Akın Birdal, a leading human rights activist who is now a member of Parliament from the Democratic Society Party (DTP), has long favored establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission in Turkey. When asked about the initiative concerning Diyarbakır Prison, he first draws attention to the debates on a new constitution.
“While discussing a new constitution, we must discuss and question the violations that stemmed from the existing Constitution. A new constitution cannot be drafted without questioning the existing one and the ideological manner behind it. It is important that Article 15 will be abolished, but there can be no statute of limitations in crimes committed against humanity,” Birdal says, referring to reports that the interim Article 15 will be abolished to make possible the prosecution of commanders who staged the Sept. 12 coup.
In a recent interview with Today’s Zaman, leading constitutional expert Professor Ergun Özbudun, who devised a draft constitution upon the government’s request, said: “The interim articles make sense only in the context of the constitution they are contained in. It is not possible to insert them into the new constitution. For instance, the provisions in the 1961 constitution on the National Unity Committee were left out in the 1982 constitution. Of course this will not necessarily mean that [Gen.] Kenan Evren and the other commanders who took part in the coup will be tried. Such a move is impossible because of the statute of limitations, anyway. Furthermore it would be a useless action that would do nothing but cause new political wounds.”
Yet Birdal doesn’t agree with this point, remarking: “There can be no statute of limitations in crimes against humanity.”
After carrying out a detailed and systematic study as the truth commission they established, the initiative led by Can plans to take the issue to Parliament in order to urge lawmakers to create a parliamentary investigation commission on Diyarbakır Prison. Until then they plan to share all information, such as witnesses’ statements, with the public on a regular basis.
“The commission formed by sociologists, journalists, lawyers, artists … formed by people with consciences … will gather to draft a road map for systematically sharing information with the public. We won’t hide any information from the public. This is a search for justice,” Can asserts. Birdal says the truth commission experience in Morocco could be a good example for Turkey. Morocco’s truth commission -- the first in the Arab world -- in 2005 delivered its final report on four decades of human rights abuses under King Hassan II. It was King Mohammed VI, the son of King Hassan II, who created Morocco’s Equity and Reconciliation Commission in early January 2004, Birdal recalls, adding, “With a process like this, people will see that crimes against humanity will not be ignored; thus the crimes committed in the past will not [serve as encouragement].”
As a current member of the parliamentary Human Rights Commission, Birdal is preparing for introducing a proposal to establish such a commission.
“And if we can take the proposal from the commission to Parliament, it will create democratic pressure on the government and I believe that their consciences will not remain unmoved,” he states.
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