Bingöl massacre in 1993
The Bingöl massacre occurred on May 24, 1993 west of the city of Bingöl in eastern Anatolia , Turkey . PKK forces shot and killed 33 unarmed soldiers who were taken from their buses at a roadblock. The massacre led to the breach of the PKK's ceasefire and an intensification of the conflict.
prehistory
On March 17, 1993, PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan announced a unilateral ceasefire for the period between March 20 and April 15 and called on all Kurds in Turkey to spend the Nouruz festival peacefully. Öcalan hoped that this gesture would make the Turkish government willing to negotiate on a political solution to the armed conflict . On March 20, some of Öcalan's rivals in the Turkish-Kurdish and Iraqi-Kurdish movements also made a statement in support of a peaceful settlement of the conflict. On April 16, just one day after the unilateral armistice had expired, Öcalan extended it indefinitely and ended the armistice on June 8, 1993.
massacre
The massacre occurred after PKK armed forces blocked the road between the cities of Elazığ and Bingöl and stopped several vehicles. Among the vehicles there were also two civilian buses with members of the army who had completed their basic training and were to be brought to their units. They wore civilian clothes and were unarmed.
Many of the people were abducted by the gunmen and shot about two and a half kilometers from the stopping point. Interior Minister İsmet Sezgin later confirmed the deaths of 33 soldiers and two civilians. 30 of the soldiers were born in 1972/73. According to Ünal Erkan, the governor of the region in a state of emergency , around 150 rebels are believed to have been involved in the massacre. After the incidents became known, the Turkish army started a search and rescue operation in which fighter planes and attack helicopters were also used. More prisoners could be released from the hands of the armed men.
Effects
The acting Prime Minister Erdal İnönü called the massacre the real, bloody face of the PKK and saw himself confirmed in claims that the PKK would never adhere to a ceasefire. President Suleyman Demirel spoke of a setback for the attempt to bring peace to south-east Turkey.
The Turkish government reacted to the massacre with increased military action against the PKK, which in return announced a return to violence on June 8th. As a result of the conflict there was an emigration of Kurds to central and western Turkey. The army also built camps for Kurdish residents, whose towns or cities became uninhabitable due to the increased fighting. The pro-Kurdish party HEP was declared illegal by the Constitutional Court and dissolved in August after the party advocated an end to Turkish anti-terrorist measures and MPs spoke favorably about the PKK.
In 2012, the Human Rights Commission of the Turkish Parliament held a session on the 1993 massacre at which survivors also had their say.
The massacre left many open questions and gave room for conspiracy theories . Critics of the government and some of the survivors believe that the soldiers were deliberately ambushed in order to undermine the peace process with the Kurds. There was no other way of explaining the transport of unarmed soldiers through an area controlled by the PKK without escort. On the other hand, it was an inconspicuous transport in civilian buses during a ceasefire declared by the PKK.
The PKK itself never officially confessed to the massacre. PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan spoke of the act of a breakaway unit that would not have been under his authority. The unit was led by Şemdin Sakık , who was captured by Turkish troops in Northern Iraq in 1998 and later sentenced to life imprisonment.
Web links
- Turks say Kurds killed 33 Troops, New York Times
- Is Turkey on the verge of returning back to the murders of the 1990s ?, middleeasteye.net
- Ocalan: Greeks supplied Kurdish rebels, bbc.uk
literature
- Primitive Rebels Or Revolutionary Modernizers ?: The Kurdish National , by Paul J. White
- The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in the 1990s , by Robert W. Olson
- The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey: From Protest to Resistance , by Cengiz Güneş
- Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence , by Aliza Marcus