ANKARA, Turkey – Eight-year-old Behzat Ozen died and his 11-year-old friend was seriously injured by a landmine last month, their names growing the number of victims killed or maimed every year from unexploded ordnance that the Turkish government refuses to clean up from its war with the Kurds.
Ozen was tending his family’s animals with friend Tayfun Can at a field where they found and played with some live ordnance in the Semdinli district of Hakkari province.
The Social Awareness and Anti-Violence Association of Diyarbakır notes that people living in Kurdish cities -- especially children – are frequent victims of mines and other explosive remnants, which have killed 6,360 people in Turkey by the end of 2011.
“Another aspect of being a Kurd in Turkey is about living with mines. Mines mean losing an organ or dying while doing some chores that everybody else does on a daily basis,” said Ozlem Ozturk, the head of the association.
According to data from the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (TIHV), 128 children lost their lives between 1999 and 2011 from unexploded ordnance.
Last year 19 people – about half of them children – were killed by mines and shells, and 85 others were injured.
Turkey’s southeast Kurdish regions have suffered from three decades of war between the Turkish military and the militant and outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The conflict has killed an estimated 40,000 people, but the two sides are now engaged in a slow-moving peace process to end the fighting.
One of last year’s victims was 17-year-old high school student Nizar Babat, who died by stepping on a landmine while collecting firewood in the village of Bave.
The Geneva-based Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor (CMC) reports that Turkey continues to retain the largest number of antipersonnel mines among states that have signed the international Mine Ban Treaty.
Muteber Ogreten, spokesperson of the CMC’s Initiative for a Mine-Free Turkey, told Rudaw that Ankara signed the treaty in 2004 “and said that it would remove its mines by 2014, but has not yet carried out the requirements of the treaty.”
She added that Turkey demanded extra time – until 2022 -- from the Treaty Commission, but that there are still uncertainties about Ankara’s intentions over clearing the mines.
“There are more than 1 million mines in Turkey now. Turkey has not removed the mines and explosives yet, but it should have at least tried to prevent people from being victimized by them,” she said.
“It should have located the mines and explosives, enclosed them and given training to people on how to protect themselves from the minefields,” she added. “If Turkey had removed the mines as it said it would, people would not still be losing their lives.”
CMC reported that all known casualties due to mines and explosive remnants of war (ERW) in Turkey by the end of 2011 were 6,360, of which 1,269 were deaths and 5,091 were injuries.
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