Kurdish citizens travelling in a minibus in Şemdinli, Hakkari (Colemêrg) province were stopped under the pretext of a ‘check’, and then harassed and threatened by Turkish soldiers. DEM Party Hakkari MP Öznur Bartın shared a video filmed at the scene by a passenger in the vehicle.
The footage, released on X, shows a masked soldier firing shots into the air as he confronts the group of unarmed civilians, who remained inside the vehicle.
“Not a day passes in Hakkâri, Şemdinli, without some injustice by the military or the police. (…) The same village, the same place, has been in the spotlight repeatedly, yet the oppression has not ceased. The climate of fear has become the backbone of the government,” Bartın said, responding to the incident.
The intimidating behaviour displayed by the Turkish soldier is reminiscent of the tactics used by the Turkish government’s Gendarmerie Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism Organisation (JİTEM) in 1990s Turkey, during which the special forces harassed, abducted and murdered Kurds.
Turkish journalist Cevheri Güven recently revealed alleged links between key figures in the Turkish military intelligence service and former members of JİTEM, pointing to a complex web of influence affecting the country’s security policy and the Turkish-Kurdish conflict. An escalation of oppressive tactics against residents of Hakkari this week indicates continued systemic violence against the Kurdish community in Turkey.
A well-known Turkish ultra-nationalist politician, Sinan Oğan, on 13 April warned of an imminent state of emergency declared by the Turkish government in the Kurdish-majority southeastern regions of Turkey, and in contested border regions. “Migration movements” were also likely, he said. A state of emergency was imposed on Kurdish-majority provinces for 15 years, from 1987 to 2002.
