Saturday Mothers ask about Bekir Demir's fate in the 1129th week

The Saturday Mothers/People, holding their 1129th week gathering in Galatasaray Square, once again asked about the fate of Bekir Demir, who was taken away by military helicopter on 13 October 1993 from the Badı hamlet of Alacakepir village in the Kulp district of Diyarbakır. The statement was read by Zeynep Yıldız, a relative of the missing man. The group has been holding a sit-in in the same square since 1995.

According to the statement, Demir was 29 years old and the father of four children when he was lost. He was from Batman, lived in Adana and supported his family by driving a taxi at the bus terminal. His friend S.T., with whom he worked at the terminal, invited him to the home of his father-in-law, who lived in the Badı hamlet of Alacakepir village in the Kulp district of Diyarbakır. Demir went to the hamlet with his wife and his one-and-a-half-year-old child; their aim was to buy winter foodstuffs such as honey and walnuts from the host.

In those days the Bolu Brigade, under the command of General Yavuz Ertürk, was conducting intensive military operations in the region. On the second day of the visit, 13 October 1993, soldiers carried out an operation on the Badı hamlet; about 30 people in the hamlet were gathered in the village square and their identities were taken. Demir was told that he was not a settled resident of the village, and was then put on a military helicopter with the words "The commander wants him." His wife and the villagers witnessed the incident; no news has been received from him since that day.

The family applied to the governor's office, the gendarmerie and the public prosecutor's offices; the applications were not processed on the grounds that no evidence was found. To the petitions submitted to the Chief Public Prosecutor's Office in 1995 and 2002, this time the answer given was that no military operation was being conducted in the region at the time Demir was lost. Official documents that emerged later, however, confirmed that the Bolu 2nd Commando Brigade was conducting operations in the region.

Despite the detailed statements of the witnesses, the Kulp Chief Public Prosecutor's Office decided on 3 November 2014 that there was no ground for prosecution, on the grounds that the statute of limitations for the case had expired. The Diyarbakır 3rd Criminal Court of Peace rejected the family's objection on 5 March 2015. The Military Prosecutor's Office had requested from the Bolu 2nd Commando Brigade Command the identity information of the ranked personnel who took part in the operation; the Brigade Command did not provide the information, claiming that the building housing the archive had been left under water and that the records could not be reached.

On 7 February 2015 the Constitutional Court found the claim that the right to life had been violated inadmissible on the grounds of time limitation (Application No: 2015/7584). Thereupon the family applied to the European Court of Human Rights.

In the statement read by Zeynep Yıldız it was said that "the Bekir Demir file is one of the clear examples of how testimonies are ignored and how impunity is produced"; it was stressed that the file cannot be closed on the grounds of the statute of limitations and that an effective investigation and prosecution must be carried out, taking into account international law obligations concerning the crime of enforced disappearance.