ANKARA, Turkey - In the early hours of Saturday morning, Turkish soldiers raided the Kurdish village of Roboski and detained several people, among them survivors of a deadly airstrike three years ago that killed 34 villagers near the border with Iraqi Kurdistan.
Veli Encu, who lost his 15-year-old brother and 11 close relatives in the airstrike, told Rudaw that the villagers were beaten while being arrested.
“They did not send an ambulance for us when our relatives were bombed two years ago. But yesterday they sent helicopters to detain and take our relatives to the prosecutor’s office, while battering them at the same time,” Encu said.
The soldiers reportedly raided and ransacked the houses for four hours, because the villagers had protested the building of a fence between Turkey and the Kurdistan Region on Wednesday.
Ibrahim Yaylali, a peace activist in Sirnak, told Rudaw that Roboski villagers oppose the construction of military outposts and walls.
“The Turkish state is building three military outposts in the region and a road to link those outposts. They are also putting a fence and laying mines around the outposts because they want to remove people from this region. This is what the people are protesting,” Yaylali explained.
“While we were protesting that last week, the security forces started throwing gas bombs and firing bullets at us. Ciya Serhat Encu was shot in the head and had a brain hemorrhage during that attack. He cannot see properly with his eye since then and is still in hospital,” Yaylali said.
In the meantime, the Turkish military prosecutor’s office dismissed the investigation into the Roboski massacre last week.
The 16-page ruling said that “the staff of the Turkish armed forces acted in accordance with the decisions of the Turkish parliament and council of ministers and with the approval of the general staff.”
The ruling also stated that Necdet Ozel, chief of the Turkish military’s general staff, gave the order for the air strike from his home.
Mesut Bestas, a lawyer representing the family of one of the victims, threatened to take the Roboski case to the European Court of Human Rights.
“The fact that there will not be a trial for this massacre shows that the state thinks killing Kurds is permissible. We will submit our petition of objection to the military prosecutors and then lodge an appeal with the constitutional court. If we cannot get any results from those institutions, we will take the case to the European Court of Human Rights and International Criminal Court,” he said.
Encu told Rudaw that receiving the ruling by the military prosecutors was like having the 34 victims killed all over again.
“We struggled for two years to bring the perpetrators of the massacre to court, but the state officials did not even send the ruling to our lawyers. We learnt it from TV,” he said. “None of those responsible for the massacre have been removed from their posts. The perpetrators of the massacre are rewarded instead of being punished,” Encu complained.
He said that the government is trying to ban the villagers from entering the location of the massacre.
“I and my four friends took a writer to the border as she was going to write a book on the massacre. On our way back, the military officers stopped us. They had about 30 dogs with them. They detained us even though we had not crossed the border. And they gave us a fine of 2,000 Turkish liras for border violation,” he said.
This was not the only time the villagers were given a fine. Relatives who tried to go to the site to lay flowers to mark 500 days after the attack, were stopped, given fines or asked to report to the police station, villagers complained.
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