As a result of mafia leader Sedat Peker’s confessions to murders committed by order of the state, various people and groups have begun to ask about the unsolved murders and forced disappearances that took place in Turkey in the ’90s.
During the 1990s Syriac people who lived in the Tur Abdin region of Turkey (including the eastern half of Mardin Province and Şırnak Province west of the Tigris in southeast Turkey on the border with Syria) were among the groups who faced various forms of state oppression in Turkey. The European Syriac Union (ESU) has released a written statement about the unsolved murders committed in the country in the 1990s and noted that the murders of 60 Syriac people in the Tur Abdin region have still not been solved.
The ESU underlined that the Syriac people living in the region near Mardin’s Midyat were also targeted during the 1990s, resulting in a huge wave of migration to Europe.
“The murderers of nearly 60 Syriac people have never been prosecuted and the requests for the proper investigations have been left unanswered,” the Union said.
The ESU noted: “the properties of the Syriac people were also seized in those days.”
Concluding the statement, the ESU declared that it will continue struggling together with democratic forces to bring the unsolved murders and enforced disappearances to light. It called on people to support their struggle to attain justice for the murders.