Hicri İzgören
This week marks the ‘Week of Struggle Against Enforced Disappearances in Custody’… As in every year, various organisations are holding events and sessions to raise awareness and bring greater visibility to this issue.
Turkey continues to occupy a position where justice, rights and the rule of law have yet to be realised. States cannot build a genuine democracy unless they confront their histories openly and honestly.
In this country, people were disappeared while in custody. Some lost a brother, some a spouse, some a father, and others a child — suddenly taken from the street, their homes, or places of work, and made to vanish without a trace.
Ariel Dorfman says, “To deny the past is not as easy as some would claim. If even a single person in this world still wants to remember and keep them alive, it is impossible to do so. That is enough — one person crying out in the moral desert, then another, and another — this is enough to prevent the spark of justice from dying out. History may be listening to us; history may answer us.”
Indeed. History is listening to us, and it will, sooner or later, respond — we must believe this with all our hearts. But first, we must remember.
Turkey is unwilling to enter the areas of its history that have been left in the dark. All governments past and present have either denied or attempted to erase events and truths that require confrontation, as if in consensus.
The International Committee Against Disappearances (ICAD), in its statements, affirms that enforced disappearances remain a serious issue in today’s world, noting, “Those taken into custody are often killed under torture and buried in secret locations, with their bodies made to disappear.” It also highlights the long-standing struggle of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, as well as the determined efforts of Turkey’s Saturday Mothers.
It is for this reason that Turkey has placed reservations on the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.
Among the crimes committed by states and governments against humanity, enforced disappearances are one of the foremost. To preserve their grip on power, those in opposition have sometimes been tortured to death and disappeared by the state’s security forces or by paramilitary structures. What we call “disappearance” is, in fact, the denial or concealment of the truth about what happened to them.
Investigations into the disappeared were either left unresolved, closed without prosecution, or allowed to lapse through statutes of limitation. In this regard, justice has consistently favoured the perpetrators. Those shielded by protective immunity were defended by the state. Legal cases were deliberately prolonged to fall under time limitations. However, under international conventions, statutes of limitation should not apply to such crimes.
For years, regardless of snow, cold, or police batons, mothers have taken part in sit-in protests seeking news of their children or spouses, hoping at the very least to have a grave to visit. One by one, they are passing away without ever receiving an answer.
In Turkey, the persistent efforts of the Human Rights Association (İHD) regarding the disappeared must be acknowledged. For years, despite the costs and relentless pressure on its administrators and members, it has carried out this crucial work.
Sit-in protests for the disappeared have continued for years. Actions and events have been organised to seek the truth about those who were forcibly disappeared in custody and to demand the prosecution of those responsible.
The past cannot be denied. A democratic state and society cannot be built by consigning all past injustices to collective amnesia. A true democracy, and the will that underpins it, also requires confronting the past and bringing those responsible to justice.
Hicri İzgören is a poet and writer. He was born in 1950 in Siverek, Şanlıurfa. He graduated from the Social Studies Department of the Diyarbakır Institute of Education. He is a member of the Turkish Writers’ Union, the Association of Literary Writers, and PEN.
