Can Turkey’s Kurds, military ever reconcile?
A court case in Diyarbakir provides hope for the first time for reconciliation between the Turkish military and Kurdish citizens.
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey — Resolving the Kurdish issue in Turkey is no easy task. Right or wrong, Turkey’s Kurds have deep layers of resentment for the way the state has treated them. And that notion remains the most significant stumbling block before an acceptable peace, for the chances of reconciling the relationship between the Kurds and the military still look very dim.
However, a state prosecutor in Diyarbakir provided an unprecedented hope — something that the locals here in Diyarbakir actually consider to be more meaningful than the government’s Kurdish opening — when he filed an indictment on Oct. 22 about a treacherous case just a day before it would have been automatically declared nullified due to the statute of limitations.
“After 20 long years, we now have hope, just because of one soldier, to prove that my dad is innocent of the crime he is accused of and jailed unjustly for 18 years,” Selma Ozkan told Al-Monitor in Diyarbakir. “If this soldier didn’t have the courage to tell the truth to the prosecutor, we would have lost all our chances of saving my dad. He is 75 years old and still suffering from the remnants of heavy torture.”
That soldier is Huseyin Oguz, who was in the region back then as a Gendarmerie Intelligence first sergeant. Speaking to Al-Monitor, the retired Oguz said, “The Kanas-style gun that killed Brig. Gen. Bahtiyar Aydin was brought to Lice by a soldier from the 7th Rapid Reaction Corps in Diyarbakir. The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) never used such a gun in its operations. There was a bad strain within JITEM, [the Gendarmerie Intelligence and Counterterrorism Organization]. If one really were to know what they have done to these people, it was inhumane. I just shared with the prosecutor’s office what I know, as a responsible citizen. That is all!”
