Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), refused to rally behind its MP Sezgin Tanrıkulu, who became the subject of an investigation on Saturday for speaking out about serious human rights violations against Kurds by the Turkish Armed Forces.
CHP Spokesman Faik Öztrak issued a statement on his social media account, saying that Tanrıkulu’s comments were “unacceptable” and that the matter would be discussed internally within the party.
Öztrak stated, “The remarks made by the MP for Diyarbakır Sezgin Tanrıkulu cast a shadow over our cherished Turkish Armed Forces and are unacceptable. This issue will be deliberated among our competent bodies.”
Öztrak’s statement came shortly after the Ministry of Defence denounced the allegations as “slander”, and without naming Tanrıkulu, remarked, “Those who make these accusations and who lend credence to them are blind and misguided at the very least.”
Ankara Public Prosecutor’s Office initiated two separate investigations against the MP for Diyarbakır following statements he made on a TV100 programme on Friday evening. Tanrıkulu criticised the armed forces, saying that parliamentary questions needed to be raised, as he expressed concerns relating to certain historical actions of the armed forces, such as the military coup of 1980, the attempted coup of 2016 and specific allegations of severe human rights violations such as throwing villagers out of helicopters.
Tanrıkulu accuses AKP of smear campaign
After the prosecution launched its investigation, Tanrıkulu took to social media to explain that there had been European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decisions regarding the incidents he had mentioned.
Tanrıkulu pointed to two ECHR cases involving Turkey: “The first relates to the disappearance of 11 villagers in a village in the Kulp district of Diyarbakır in October 1993. The state denied that these villagers disappeared after being taken away by helicopter. However, witnesses saw the villagers being forcibly taken away. The villagers were forcibly disappeared.”
He continued: “The second case involves the bombing by warplanes of the Kuşkonar and Koçağıllı villages in Şırnak, resulting in the deaths of 33 villagers, according to an ECHR ruling. These are not my judgments; they are ECHR decisions.”
Accusing the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of launching an institutional smear campaign, Tanrıkulu commented: “The fact that the AKP are, based on the principle of the continuity of the state, claiming ownership of these grave violations against Kurds, which took place before the establishment of the AKP, and which have been confirmed by ECHR decisions to be crimes against humanity, is a further admission that the AKP is the new master of the deep state.”
Chemical weapons allegations
The whole thing came to a head during the TV100 programme on Friday night when the Editor-in-Chief of Bizim TV Şaban Sevinç accused Tanrıkulu, who was not present, of believing allegations made by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that the Turkish Armed Forces had been using chemical weapons, citing his proposal of a motion on the matter in parliament. Tanrıkulu then joined the programme by telephone, explaining his reasons for proposing the motion, and elaborating on his comments about the armed forces, which led to the investigation.
Allegations that the armed forces had used chemical weapons in its crossborder operations in northern Iraq in 2021 came to the forefront in October last year when the People’s Defence Centre (HSM), a wing of the PKK claimed that the armed forces had used “internationally banned bombs and chemical weapons that produce poisonous gases” during these operations.
The Ministry of Defence denied the allegations as “completely baseless and unfounded”.
Former Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş, who is currently imprisoned in Edirne Prison, made a statement through his lawyers at the time, saying, “There are videos showing that chemical weapons were used against the PKK. The Turkish Grand National Assembly and the opposition cannot remain silent about this. Remaining silent about this is tantamount to approving the crime.”
Tanrıkulu had also stated then that he intended to submit a parliamentary question regarding the veracity of the images used as the basis for these allegations.
