In a case concerning the enforced disappearance and murders of 18 persons in the Southeast of the country in the 1990s, the Supreme Appeals Court of Turkey has maintained the acquittal of 19 defendants, including former interior minister Mehmet Ağar. The main focus of the case is JİTEM, a clandestine military organization that is alleged to have carried out the extrajudicial executions of Kurdish businesses and politicians at a time of fierce fighting between Kurdish rebels and the Turkish government.
A lack of “credible evidence” against the accused is the reason for the judgment, which has been criticized by the public. The court ruled that a large portion of the evidence was untrustworthy, contradictory, and hearsay. A retrial resulted from a regional appeals court overturning the 2019 acquittal ruling in 2021. However, this final Supreme Court decision resulted from the acquittal being upheld in late 2023.
Many of the victims’ families are extremely upset about the decision since they had hoped for justice following years of battling for responsibility in a number of well-known unsolved murders from the 1990s. According to the families, this is just one more instance of Turkey’s widespread culture of impunity, which seldom holds public servants accountable for serious crimes they are accused of committing.
Though its existence was publicly denied for many years, JİTEM, a contentious and covert section of the Turkish Gendarmerie, has long been accused of engaging in unlawful operations throughout Turkey’s war with Kurdish insurgent organizations. This acquittal, according to critics, highlights the larger difficulties in resolving Turkey’s past violations of human rights in its current war with Kurdish groups.
Although this ruling brings an end to a protracted legal process, it leaves human rights campaigners and the relatives of the victims without closure, which exacerbates already-existing worries about judicial independence and impunity in Turkey.
