Background
The Cizre district of Şırnak was among the places where armed conflict and emergency-rule practices were most intense in south-east Turkey during the 1990s. Many people there were detained and then disappeared or were found dead, and the incidents were mostly recorded as 'unsolved'. Families said that fear and emergency-rule conditions kept them from filing formal complaints for a long time.
According to the case files, it was alleged that about twenty people were unlawfully detained and killed or disappeared between 1993 and 1995. The figure varies by source: some reports say 20, others 21.
The allegations
The indictment alleged that an informal team operated in the district under the direction of the gendarmerie commander. It was said to consist of former PKK members known as confessors and of specialist sergeants regarded as trustworthy, and to have used unregistered vehicles and code names. These accounts rested on some witness statements in the file.
Families said their relatives were never seen again after being taken into custody. In some incidents bodies were found in rural places such as a dry streambed; the fate of others was never learned.
Investigation and trial
The trial opened in Diyarbakır in 2009. The defendants included retired Colonel Cemal Temizöz, who had served as Cizre district gendarmerie commander, and the former mayor of Cizre, Kamil Atağ. Eight defendants in total were tried on charges of forming and belonging to an organisation to commit crimes, incitement to murder and murder. After special courts were abolished, the file moved to Şırnak and then, for security reasons, to Eskişehir. Temizöz spent about five years in detention before being released.
The Eskişehir 2nd Heavy Penal Court acquitted all eight defendants on 5 November 2015. Relatives of the victims appealed. On 25 November 2021 the 1st Criminal Chamber of the Court of Cassation upheld the acquittals by three votes to two, ending the proceedings. The two dissenting members argued the defendants should have been convicted. One wrote that the late filing of complaints could be explained by fear and emergency conditions; the other noted that the statements of secret witnesses matched each other and the physical evidence, although those witnesses later retracted them.
Where it stands today
Because the ruling is final, the defendants stand legally acquitted and nobody has been convicted for these events. The case is often cited as one of the best-known trials concerning enforced disappearances and unsolved killings of the 1990s in Turkey. Families and legal organisations continue to call for the facts to be established.