Deja vu ... Executing Civilians ... Old habits die hard?

(BBC) - Kurdish 'grave sites' to be dug

By Sarah Rainsford
BBC News, Istanbul

A Turkish prosecutor has ordered the digging up of several sites where it is believed the bodies of Kurds killed in the 1990s may have been dumped.

Hundreds of people disappeared at the height of the fighting in the mainly Kurdish south-east.

Human rights lawyers say many were last seen with security forces members.

The Kurdish conflict, which began in the 1980s when insurgents started fighting for a separate Kurdish state, still continues today.

Close to 40,000 people have been killed.

More than 70 families applied to a prosecutor in the town of Silopi after information emerged suggesting the location of their relatives' bodies.

The prosecutor has ordered the excavation of two old well-shafts behind an abandoned roadside restaurant.

Another site to be dug is on the grounds of a storage facility of the Botash oil company.

Human rights lawyers also want to examine parts of a municipal cemetery where they believe a mass grave of the missing could be found.

Missing politicians

Hundreds of Kurdish civilians have been missing, presumed dead, since the height of the Kurdish conflict in the region in the mid-1990s.

Lawyers began pushing for permission to dig certain sites after a former security officer, now in hiding abroad, gave information about the torture and execution of Kurdish civilians.

They were also boosted by the unprecedented arrest of military members, retired and active, in connection with an alleged plot to topple the government.

Several of the men now in custody were in command in the Kurdish conflict region in the 1990s.

The lawyers argue prosecutors should broaden the scope of that coup trial to include a full investigation of the alleged crimes against the Kurds.

Most recently two politicians disappeared in 2001 after they were called for questioning at the local headquarters of the military police.

In that case and others the European Court of Human Rights found Turkey guilty of violating the right to life, but here in Turkey itself the families of the missing have never found justice - or the bodies of their relatives.

Suicide Related to the Ergenekon Case

A senior Turkish police officer has been found dead in his car in what Turkish authorities claim is a suicide related to the Ergenekon case. Political analysts say that the people who constitute the "Deep State" are members of Ergenekon.

Turkish authorities said the dead man is Behcet Oktay--former head of the police special forces. Oktay was dismissed from his post two days ago after thirteen years as head of the Special Forces. Oktay was found dead in his car in an Ankara parking place with a bullet wound in his head. His predecessor, a prime suspect now in custody, had named Oktay as a member of the Ergenekon group.

The hard-line nationalist Ergenekon organization appears to be made up of (former and present) army officers, police officers, journalists, and other influential people who have allegedly been plotting to kill government officials and overthrow the Turkish government.

The Gladio

Here is an interesting article from the Turkish Daily News which talks about a special war department that may or may not be linked to Turkey’s shadowy Deep State. This is a significant read because, to my knowledge, the existence of such a department has never been acknowledged before by the Turkish Government. The article mentions Turkey's Minister of National Defense Vecdi Gonul stating this special department "shouldered important responsibilities" in the lead-up to the Cyprus invasion.