The enforced disappearances also give us an opportunity to discuss the Kurdish problem with our feelings.True, many people are saying the “mothers should stop crying, for this is too much,” but that alone does not make the subject “humanitarian.”
Neither the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), recognized as a terrorist organization, nor the many people in Turkey look at the other side's “lost” as human beings. It took almost 25 years for Turkey's chief of general staff to say that “terrorists are human beings, too.”
And following President Abdullah Gül's most recent remarks, everyone is now hopeful and talking about the possibility of solving the long-standing Kurdish question. The roadmap for it differs depending on who's speaking, but for me, the road to solving the problem passes through making the question a humanitarian issue.
A foreign colleague of mine recently asked me what might the ideas be of Turkish citizens who do not live in southeastern or eastern Anatolia about enforced disappeared persons. I answered by saying that not until recently were they aware of the fact that during the 1990s almost 1,800 people disappeared. It was only after the investigation into Ergenekon began that they began hearing about it.
Several excavations took place in Silopi, Diyarbakır and most recently Batman. It was only after this that they became aware of the fact that some people disappeared in this country. I added that regardless of what anyone says, the children of this land are good-hearted people and that if they hear more about the enforced disappearances and their stories as human beings, they will demand the truth and for those responsible to be punished.
This week was the Week of Disappeared Persons. Several NGOs have since 1996 been organizing events to mark the week. The idea came after the 1995 disappearance of Hasan Ocak during the Gazi incidents, in which 17 people were killed in an Alevi neighborhood of İstanbul. The incident was allegedly organized by Ergenekon. A document of the trial for the organization shows one Ergenekon suspect fired the first shot. Ocak was found in a graveyard for unidentified corpses 57 days after his disappearance. His body showed severe marks of torture.
All these realities tell us we need more information about the disappeared persons. We should not only establish a DNA bank to assist in the identification of bones found through excavations but maybe also a museum to present those who lost their lives as human beings, too. Knowing more about them as human beings will make the problem a humanitarian one and help us get closer to a solution and to reconciliation.
There is one more thing that needs to be done, and that is to sign the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances.
According to the treaty, the victims' families have the right to know what happened to their loved ones. It envisages the establishment of an international monitoring body that will have the power to accept requests for urgent action on individual cases, to conduct visits with the agreement of the state parties concerned and, in the event of suspected widespread or systematic abuse in a territory under the jurisdiction of a state party, to urgently bring the matter before the United Nations General Assembly.
The most important part of the treaty is that, if it enters into force, disappearances will be considered crimes against humanity. If Turkey signs this agreement, some of the Ergenekon suspects, allegedly responsible for some enforced disappearances, will also be accused of committing a crime against humanity.
In short, the disappeared persons are giving us many opportunities to have a better life even though they are no longer with us.
