Background
In the early 2000s local organisations of political parties in the Southeast were under close scrutiny. In Silopi the HADEP district branch opened on 3 January 2001 despite pressure, and 25-year-old Serdar Tanış became its chair. Ebubekir Deniz, 27, was one of the party officials.
Tanış is said to have told relatives of pressure and threats aimed at making him abandon party work, and on 9 January 2001 he reportedly filed written complaints with higher authorities.
What happened
On 25 January 2001 Tanış was reportedly summoned by telephone to the Silopi District Gendarmerie Command, went with Deniz, and neither was heard from again. For five days the gendarmerie said it had never seen them. As public pressure grew, the governor of Şırnak at the time stated that the two had come to the station but left after half an hour.
Families and HADEP officials said there was no witness or record of their leaving the station.
The families said no witness saw the two leave the station and that questions put to the authorities received no consistent answer. A month after the event the press reported that the two HADEP members were still missing.
Investigation and legal process
At the families' initiative the case was taken to the European Court of Human Rights. In its judgment of 2 August 2005 the Court found that Turkey had violated the right to life, that public officials were directly responsible for the disappearances and that no effective domestic investigation was carried out; it awarded the families a total of 172,000 euros.
Domestically the file was closed in 2015 with a non-prosecution decision. In 2019 the Constitutional Court found an individual application inadmissible as out of time. The families' lawyers argued that the senior commander seen as responsible was never questioned about the disappearance. No one has been indicted or convicted in the case.
The ECtHR judgment is often cited as an important example for enforced-disappearance files in Turkey. Even so, no step was taken domestically to identify those responsible.
Where it stands today
The fate of Tanış and Deniz remains unknown. In early 2026, on the 25th anniversary, the Saturday Mothers and relatives of the disappeared again appealed for justice at their 1,088th weekly gathering.
Dark Location keeps this page in memory of two young politicians and as a reminder that enforced-disappearance cases remain unresolved.
For more than twenty-five years the families have been asking the same question: where are Serdar and Ebubekir? It is also central to the demand that enforced disappearances not be subject to limitation periods.