The government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is going ahead with the much-heralded peace process that it hopes will end the terrorist war waged by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) for the past three and a half decades while questions remain about the fate of a huge army of village guards who have been recruited to fight the Kurdish militants along with the Turkish army.
In 1985, the village guards system was set up through a special law whereby villagers were recruited to assist the Turkish military in its fight against the militants in eastern and southeastern Turkey, where the PKK launched its terrorism campaign in 1984. Today, there are at least 59,000 armed village guards on the government payroll and an additional 23,000 volunteers who are also armed and have special privileges, according to Interior Ministry statistics. Along with family members of the guards, Interior Ministry sources estimate 500,000 people benefit from the village guards system.
Most of the village guards are of Kurdish origin, which has created a blood feud between them and the PKK. In the early stages of the terrorist campaign, the PKK had raided several villages known to house village guards, killing women and children. Most of these attacks occurred between 1990 and 1994. On June 11, 1990, PKK militants attacked the Cevrimli village in the southeastern Sirnak province, killing 27 people, including seven women and 12 children.
Similar PKK attacks continued in several eastern and southeastern villages, where women and children were gunned down by PKK militants.
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