“Give me my son’s bones!”
“They came to take my son into custody, but he was not home. So they took me instead.”
Although this incident happened in 1995, Hayat Altinkaynak remembers it as if it were yesterday, for it was the last time she or anyone in their village saw her son, 13-year-old Davut Altinkaynak.
Hayat was held in custody for four days. She recalls, “Later, they also brought my son to the police station. They took me to a place where I saw him hanging from a strappado [torture device]. His nose and mouth were bleeding. There were also two others, around my son’s age.”
In early November 1995, Davut, who was a shepherd in his village, was taken into custody by the Dargeçit Gendarmerie Battalion Command, along with six other villagers.
“Later, they released me, but not my son. We have never heard from him again.”
In the 1990s in Southeastern Turkey, where a state of emergency was in force, several hundred “disappearance” cases were reported. According to a 1998 statement by the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, “Most of the cases followed the same pattern: the missing persons had allegedly been arrested at their homes on charges of belonging to the PKK and taken to the police station, but their detention was later denied by the authorities.”
Of the dozens of men who disappeared after being held at the Dargeçit Gendarmerie Battalion Headquarters, only the burnt headless body of 58-year-old Süleyman Seyhan was discovered in a nearby well in 1996. While he was believed to be in custody, Amnesty International made an appeal* for his release.
As the years passed and no other remains were found, the families of Davut Altinkaynak, Hikmet Kaya, Abdurrahman Coşkun, Abdullah Olcay, Mehmet Emin Aslan, Nedim Akyön and Seyhan Dogan began to lose hope of ever having a grave to visit their sons at. That is, until a shocking revelation was made in 2009. A man, who had worked as a heavy equipment operator in the Dargeçit Municipality from 1994 to 1995, told a prosecutor that on several occasions soldiers brought bodies to be buried in the village. He led prosecutors to two locations where, during his employment, he had been told by soldiers to pour earth and stones.
The families of the 7 victims filed a case with the Dargeçit Public Prosecutor’s office, who ruled for the opening of the alleged mass graves. With the victims’ families, delegates from the Human Rights Association (IHD) and members of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) present, the excavation began on Friday, February 17, 2012.
While no evidence of a mass grave was found at the first location, the families started a second excavation the following day, and found what appeared to be two burnt human bones, which were sent to the Public Prosecutor’s office for examination.
The excavations continued to be carried out at a number of sites throughout the town with few significant results, until on Wednesday, February 22, a human skull and pieces of clothing were unearthed in the village of Bagözü (Tiruva). Abdulkerim Dogan said that the clothes belonged to his brother, Seyhan Dogan, who was only 14-years-old when he disappeared. IHD declared that pieces of human bones and empty bullet shells were also found at the site.
On Saturday, February 25, it was reported that a large number of bones and fragments of clothing were unearthed as the exhumation at Bagözü village resumed.
According to official reports, bones belonging to four separate persons have already been unearthed at various sites in the Dargeçit excavations. The search for the 7 disappeared villagers continues.
After waiting nearly two decades for this discovery, Hayat Altinkaynak waits now for her son’s bones to be identified, in hopes of finally giving Davut a proper burial, so that they may both rest in peace.
