MÛŞ - Devrim Toprak said a confidentiality order remains in place in the case concerning his brother and cousin, who were massacred during the curfews in Gimgim. Toprak said: “We want the confidentiality order lifted and these unsolved killings brought to light.”

 

Mûş’s Gimgim (Varto) district was one of the areas affected by clashes after the dialogue process that had been underway between 2013 and 2015 came to an end. One of the most widely remembered incidents of the period was the public display by soldiers and police of the body of YJA-Star guerrilla Kevser Eltürk (Ekin Wan), who lost her life in a clash on August 10, 2015. The period was also marked by numerous rights violations, including homes being shot at and civilians being targeted.

 

One of these rights violations was the massacre of four people, including two civilians, in Gimgim on August 16, 2015. During the curfew imposed on August 14 and lifted on August 18, two cousins and construction workers Abdullah Toprak, 24, and Rahmi Kızıltaş, 35, were among those massacred. After their bodies were recovered, an examination found that Kızıltaş, a father of three, had been shot 12 times.

 

Although Kızıltaş’s family maintains that he was executed, their efforts to obtain justice have yielded no results, and no effective investigation has been conducted into the circumstances of his death. Eleven years after the deaths of cousins Kızıltaş and Toprak, the case remains under a confidentiality order.

 

Devrim Toprak, whose brother Abdullah’s death has remained unresolved for 11 years, renewed his call for justice.

 

‘WE WANT PEACE’

 

Toprak said the pain of losing his brother and cousin was still with them and continued: “Eleven years have passed, but our pain, our loss and our longing are just as strong as they were on the first day. They will never fade or go away. I can still hear the lament my mother cried out in those first days. She still sings the same lament. Nothing has eased in 11 years. She still calls out their names through the night. Our pain will never fade, but we will always stand for peace. There have been thousands, even millions, of families like ours who have suffered. Mothers have shed tears. We want peace. We want mothers to stop crying. We want the tears to stop. That is our greatest wish. All we want is peace.”

 

CALL FOR CONFIDENTIALITY ORDER TO BE LIFTED 

 

Referring to the process of identifying the bodies, Toprak reiterated that her brother and cousin had been massacred. Saying that there were eyewitness accounts concerning the killing of her brother and cousin, Toprak said: “My brother had already been wounded the day before. No one was able to reach him. He remained wounded and lost blood for an entire day. We believe he was later captured alive and massacred. The bodies were then kept at the Malatya Forensic Medicine Institute for two days, arbitrarily.”

 

Toprak said the case was still under a confidentiality order and called for it to be lifted. He said: “We want the order lifted and these unsolved killings brought to light. The pain will never go away, but we at least want justice to be done.”

 

MA / Can Kırbaş