On May 4, 2009, masked gunmen carried out a fatal attack with automatic guns and hand grenades on an engagement ceremony held in the Kurdish village, Zanqırt (Bilge in Turkish) in the South-Eastern Turkish province of Mardin. The massacre claimed the lives of 44 people, mainly women and children and became one of the bloodiest massacres to blight the Kurdish region in a decade.
Veysel Essiz works for the Helsinki Citizens' Assembly (Turkey) Refugee Advocacy and Support Program
While the incident has yet to be fully investigated, initial reports indicated that the assailants wanted the bride to marry another man. Others claimed that a blood feud or previous disputes led to the violence. However, most acknowledge that the high death toll was exceptional under the circumstances.
After news of the event spread, Interior Minister Besir Atalay immediately informed the media that the attack was not connected to "terrorism". In other words, it was apparently not an assault directed by the Kurdish guerilla group, the PKK. On the very same day, President Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the attack as "abominable, inhumane and beyond words", both inviting the public "to question this incident seriously". Amidst the condolences expressed by these high-ranking state officials, what was absent, or only half-heartedly articulated, was that all the arrested assailants were village guards who used weapons provided by the state to carry out their carnage.
The village guard system, or "provisional (and voluntary) village guards" as it is known officially, dates back to 1924. Village Law No. 442, which introduced the system, identified the village guards as a means for local populations to prevent attacks by "bandits and pillagers". In the ensuing years, the system was not only proven ineffective, but also unnecessary, since criminal laws were already in place to manage threats posed by roving "bandits". Eventually, the system was forgotten. This changed, however, with the rise of the PKK during the struggle for Kurdish independence in Turkey in the early 1980s.
In the early years of the struggle, the Turkish army underestimated the PKK, referring to the group as "a bunch of marauders". As a result, and also because it was unfamiliar with the rough terrain of the region, it initially took few steps to establish a presence in Turkey's Eastern provinces. The PKK, however, was gaining considerable support among the local Kurdish population, in no small part due to the Turkish state's obstinate denial and oppression of Kurdish identity. In response, the state eventually resurrected the village guard system in 1985, by adding a clause to Village Law No. 442.
Now, there were two critical agendas: first, village guards were considered an instrumental tool in assisting the army staff in counter-insurgency operations. Second, and more importantly, the state hoped to root out, or at least hinder, public sympathy for the PKK by employing feudal Kurdish families as village guards. The state relied solely on military means to control the conflict. From the state's perspective, all was a matter of loyalty: families who refused to serve as village guards were deemed subversives and forcibly displaced. The state engaged in a series of powerful tactics to viscerate what was perceived as the Kurdish "threat". It incinerated farm lands and forests, destroyed infrastructure, carried out food embargoes and a ban on the use of pasture lands, "disappeared" family bread winners and introduced military check-points and roadblocks to undermine the livelihood opportunities of the remaining Kurdish population in the region. Moreover, for powerful local clans, volunteering as village guards was a tempting means of securing the state's support and of expanding their already-existing influence in the region. It also was a source of income in an economically blighted area of the country. By offering a system of material benefits, de facto immunity and state arms, Turkey managed to attract both poor and wealthier segments of society into the village guard system. The system was consequently extended to 22 provinces in the Eastern and South-Eastern regions of Turkey and the total number of provisional (and voluntary) village guards reached almost 95,000 at its peak.
Like many other legislative measures meant to control the "Kurdish issue", Turkey was quick to drop a veil of secrecy around the provisions regulating the duties, powers, and appointment/ dismissal procedures of the village guard system. It was only in 2005, in response to a written inquiry of a Member of Parliament, that former Minister of Justice Cemil Cicek finally acknowledged the existence of regulation of village guards, adding, however, that "since the subject matter pertains to national security, it remained unpublished in the Official Gazette." In his response, the minister was careful to justify the classified nature of the regulation by quoting relevant rules on the limits to the right to information. However, he failed to explain what negative repercussions would result were he to make the regulation public.
Along with this lack of transparency, throughout the conflict, village guards benefited from a culture of impunity imported from the Turkish military. As a consequence, village guards became known for their role in drug and arms trafficking, summary executions, enforced disappearances, sexual assaults and seizure of lands and homes of displaced villagers. A striking tactic employed by village guards was to disguise themselves as PKK militants which would enable them to shift the blame onto the PKK. It was therefore not surprising when one of the survivors of the Mardin massacre testified to the Interior Minister that "their (i.e. village guards) aim was to exterminate all of us and attribute it to the PKK."
The widespread human rights violations committed by village guards are well documented. A 1995 report of the Parliamentary Commission for the Investigation into Murders by Unknown Assailants cited village guards as decisive actors in extrajudicial killings and other illegal activities. In 2006, again in response to a written inquiry of a Member of Parliament, Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu stated that almost 5,000 village guards had been identified as engaging in illegal activities. Similarly, a recent report of the Human Rights Association of Turkey provided case-by-case listing of 1,591 violations perpetrated by village guards from January 1990 to March 2009.
Apart from these statistics, the European Commission, the UN Special Representative on Internally Displaced Persons, Human Rights Watch and many other domestic NGOs have repeatedly singled out the village guard system as one of the most serious obstacles to the return of internally displaced people to their evacuated villages and to any form of reconciliation. Turkey, however, has consistently turned a blind eye to these official reports and recommendations. Only twenty days before the Mardin massacre, Turkish General Staff Ilker Basbug praised the "efficiency" of the village guard system without acknowledging the voluminous evidence of its disastrous human rights implications.
When the Mardin massacre sparked debates on the abolition of the village guard system, many hoped that Turkey would change or at least review its policy. These hopes were buffered by an April 2005 promise by Turkey's Permanent Representative to the UN Commission on Human Rights that "an acceptable and feasible policy, taking into account all possible social and economic repercussions, for the gradual and successful resolution of the village guards issue is under study." However, all hopes for the dismantling of this vicious system vanished when former Minister of Justice, now Minister of State Cemil Cicek noted that "one must not make knee-jerk decisions" and Interior Minister Besir Atalay confirmed that "abolition of the village guard system is not on our agenda." Clearly, Turkish authorities continue to make false promises to investigate the village guard system and take steps, in all good faith, towards advancing a comprehensive solution, including disarmament and rehabilitation.
