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Turkey may investigate military’s burning of Kurdish villages

The Turkish government may launch an investigation into the destruction of Kurdish villages by state military forces in southeastern Turkey in the 1990s.
An Iraqi Kurdish pashmarga (fighter) and a group of children watch Turkish tank movement near a small village in the mountains in Northern Iraq March 22. Thirty-five thousand Turkish soldiers backed by tanks and air power entered into northern Iraq to launch an offensive against PKK Kurdish guerrillas on March 20 - RTXG5C1
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“The mission of our battalion was to set fire to villages. We burned down 30 villages during our deployment there. … After we entered the villages, our commanders allotted houses to burn to teams of two to three soldiers. We used to enter the houses, tell the people to get out. We didn’t allow them time to move their belongings out."

These were the words of a person who had done his military service in the southeast in the 1990s and recently gave a testimony to the public prosecutor of Diyarbakir.

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