Erasing the memory of a people! (3)
- 09:50 5 February 2025
- File
A policy of erasing an identity: Cemeteries
Dilan Babat
NEWS CENTRE - Speaking about the attacks on cemeteries, Derya Aydın, a member of the Respect for the Dead and Justice Initiative, said: "The situation of the pioneers that we still cannot face since the past, whose grave places we cannot find, affects our daily lives. They still walk around Kurdistan like ghosts, as figures of resistance. There is still no comprehensive research on the consequences of war and conflict in Kurdistan."
Cemeteries are not only places where the dead are buried, but also sacred spaces that contribute to the preservation of social memory, mourning culture and identity consciousness. However, the attacks on the cemeteries of the Kurdish people have become part of a systematic policy that targets not only physical destruction, but also the erasure of memory, the violation of the right to mourn and the destruction of cultural identity. These attacks not only violate the Kurds' collective right to mourn, but also pose a threat to collective memory. The interventions in cemeteries bring with them a conscious policy of assimilation and denial aimed at severing the Kurdish people's ties with their past and their struggle.
In the third part of our dossier, Derya Aydın, a member of the Respect for the Dead and Justice Initiative, talks with Derya Aydın about the effects of the attacks on the cemeteries of the Kurdish people on the right to collective mourning, how these attacks threaten social memory and the place of this situation in international law.
“The attack on these cemeteries means an attempt to destroy the customs and memory of the people who lived through the struggle.”
*How do the attacks on the cemeteries of the Kurdish people affect the right to collective mourning? What threats do these attacks pose to the preservation of social memory?
Attacks on Kurdish cemeteries are linked to attacks on political Kurds. The attacks are against the cemeteries of people who lost their lives in the conflict. This is an important difference. These are not people who died in the ordinary course of everyday life, but political deaths. Therefore, it is memory that is damaged, neglected and attacked. This is not a different form of memory; this is the memory of the resistance.
The issue of collective mourning relates to the common mourning process that Kurds have established with members of their community who lost their lives in the conflict. Between 2013 and 2015, when there was talk of the possibility of peace, cemeteries were built in rural areas of Kurdistan, not directly on the mountainside but close to the districts. The people buried in these cemeteries are PKK members who lost their lives at different dates from the early 80s to the 2000s and were not given a proper burial. During the peace process, when funerals were organised with the participation of families, they were buried en masse in the cemeteries.
In the research I conducted in 2015-2017, a collective mourning experience emerged at that time. Some of the people who had not received their funerals for many years had buried their loved ones in that cemetery. Even though some of them could not find their relatives, it had become a place of mourning. It became a place of memory. The cemetery in Dêrsim was built as a place of memory. There were the bodies of PKK members who had lost their lives in the 90s. In the Dêrsim region, in places like the Laç Valley, the bones of those from the Haydaran tribe and other tribes who lost their lives in the massacre of ‘38 were also buried there. On the walls of that cemetery, there were also photographs of revolutionaries of the left-wing socialist movement in Turkey. It was also rumoured that the bodies of TIKO guerrillas were brought to the same cemetery.
From past to present, the memory of the struggle and the memory of those who lost their lives is embedded in the collective memory. Destroying it, attacking the cemetery means destroying the memory accumulated there. A space was built next to the cemetery. In that place, the materials found in the places where the dead bodies were exhumed were exhibited. At that time, all Kurds used to come there and listen to those narratives. The memory there was spreading all over the country. The attack on these cemeteries is an attempt to destroy the customs and memory of the people who lived through the struggle.
"There is the Minnesota Convention. Within the framework of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and humanitarian law, there are further regulations on the protection of the rights of the dead."
*What are the regulations in international law regarding cemetery attacks and violations of the right to mourning? Are the current regulations in Turkey sufficient in this regard?
As the Respect and Justice for the Dead Initiative, we started our work in 2021 and remained active for three years. We have not been active for the last year, but we have organised many panels and international conferences. What are the laws to prevent violence against the dead? Various evaluations were made on these laws. With the start of the war once again in 2016, there were developments such as the criminalisation of attending funerals, the issuing of proceedings against MPs and the preparation of indictments against journalists. At that time, this issue was discussed a lot; arguments were put forward that attending funerals was not a crime, that they were not carried out on behalf of an organisation. However, it is not enough to address this issue only within a legal framework. The struggle to prevent this situation cannot only be a legal struggle; it is also a political and ethical issue.
Neglecting the dead, subjecting them to violence or burying them without treating them with sensitivity is a form of violence as old as human history and is not only a contemporary issue. National legislation provides for various mechanisms to address this issue. These rights are not directly addressed as the right of the deceased, but within the framework of regulations such as respecting the memory of the deceased, proper burial of his/her body, allowing relatives to take his/her belongings and saying goodbye to the funeral in a proper manner. These rights are also enshrined in international law.
The great losses suffered in the First and Second World Wars played a decisive role in the formation of these laws. The formation of the International Red Cross has contributed to the formulation of specific articles in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and judgements of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). While some laws are considered as anti-torture laws, they also protect the dead body. Sometimes these regulations are defined within the framework of the right to property, sometimes as the right of the living. However, these regulations alone are not sufficient.
At the Respect for the Dead and Justice Initiative's legal panel, international lawyers participated and discussed these issues. It is actually almost impossible to legislate directly on the rights of the deceased. It can be done in absentia, because the right of the deceased is also a matter of metaphysics. Even existing laws are not enforced; in many cases, no assessment can be made on the grounds that domestic remedies must be exhausted. The atmosphere in which a person dies is one in which the law is suspended. Since the same conditions persist after the death of the deceased, the law does not work again. There is the Minnesota Convention. Within the framework of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and humanitarian law, there are more advanced regulations on the protection of the rights of the dead. However, despite all these conventions to which Turkey is a party, Turkey does not operate legal mechanisms when violent practices occur.
"All of these processes have created a political culture. Today, attacks and neglect of cemeteries prevent the preservation of that memory and lead to assimilation."
*What is the meaning of the attacks on the funerals of the Kurdish people in terms of cultural identity and history? Are these attacks linked to cultural assimilation policies?
These attacks are linked to many things. They are basically a part of politics. It is an old form of violence, neglect and attack that has been going on since the 1900s. We know that with the beginning of the rebellions in Bitlis in 1914, there were mass massacres in Koçgiri, Zilan, Amed in 1925 and Dêrsim in 1938, Kurdish pioneers were executed and their cemeteries were lost. The fact that the burial places of Şêx Said, Said-i Nursî and Seyid Rıza are unknown is also included in this issue. Since then, the practice of killing and opposing killing, the understanding of claiming one's body has created a culture in Kurdistan. This is also a culture of resistance that emerged around death. At the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, conflicts with the PKK were fierce and the state characterised this period as a ‘low intensity war’. There were many mass deaths during this period. Under those conditions, bodies could not be collected due to the declaration of banned areas.
After the 2000s, investigations carried out by organisations such as the HRA revealed a large number of mass graves in places where mass deaths had occurred. Forcibly disappeared bodies were thrown into wells and left on the banks of streams. When Dargeçit was documented, there was also evidence of bodies thrown into wells there. In this whole process, political death has turned into a battlefield and has taken an important place in the state's process of establishing sovereignty. Kurds mobilise by claiming their dead. They engage with police stations, use public spaces to collect their dead bodies, and come together with civil society organisations. Subsequently, MEYADER, MEBYADER and mourning houses were established. All of these processes have created a political culture. Today, attacks and neglect of cemeteries prevent the preservation of that memory and lead to assimilation.
"It should not be looked at as a technical work, it is necessary to discuss and work on political concepts to change this mentality."
*When we look at all these, what mechanisms need to be put in place to protect these rights?
Most discussions about the Kurds are reduced to a certain political categorisation of Kurds. We need to think more about the daily lives of Kurds, what they go through and how political death shapes the Kurdish people. This is the way to build the mechanism in front of you. Because we live in the Middle East, wars have become widespread from Palestine to Lebanon, from Rojava to Europe. In this age, the number of people losing their lives in conflicts has increased considerably. When the two world wars took place, there was a discourse based on human rights, there was hope that things would get better, but we are no longer at such a point. It is important to think about political death in order to create a mechanism against it. It is necessary to talk about it with the right concepts.
In Turkey, the funerals of PKK members or the attacks on the funerals of other groups other than Turks, men and Sunnis are discussed, but these discussions are often legitimised. The language used in social media and on television also provides this legitimisation. There was a headline in Özgür Ülke Newspaper about a PKK member's funeral being dragged. Years later, we saw the same situation at Hacı Birlik's funeral. Despite all this time, the mainstream media still uses the same language. While the lives of those people are not counted as lives and labelled as ‘terrorists’, their dead bodies are not counted as death. People can be dehumanised by using different concepts. Even the verb ‘death’ is not used; instead expressions like ‘neutralised’ are preferred. Even if this happens only in Kurdistan, the same struggle must be waged.
Women have been saying for years that the conflict has increased the number of femicides. Violence against the dead body triggers other forms of violence. Not opposing the naked exposure of a woman's dead body leads to the normalisation of other forms of violence. The first step in establishing these mechanisms is to discuss this issue together in the public sphere and to develop a common language. In order to put an end to this violence and to create mechanisms, it is necessary to confront. Kurds also need to face themselves. Although violence against Kurdish funerals is at the forefront, for many years the dead belonging to different identities have also been neglected. After the Armenian massacre, there were Armenian cemeteries everywhere and the Kurds did not pay enough respect to them. Likewise, the deaths of Yazidis, Assyrians and refugees were not given the necessary sensitivity. This issue should not be treated only as a technical issue. In order to change this mentality, it is necessary to discuss political concepts and carry out studies on this issue.
"Studies such as detailed reports and research centres on the effects on health and psychology are quite limited. However, all these experiences are turning into an organisation and a line of resistance."
*What kind of political message is there when we look at all these events?
Because we are very much involved in it, we are able to individualise it, we think as if it happened only to us. But this situation has happened and is still happening everywhere. This situation is related to colonialism. In colonial geographies, conflict and the shaping of politics around the dead body can show parallels. Nation-states can implement similar policies in the geographies they colonised. We can say that Turkey is also implementing similar policies by sampling various practices from different countries. After the Second World War, at a time when it was thought that the world could get better, the French philosopher Foucault used the concept of bio-politics when analysing power and said the following: Before modern power, he stated that power ordered death and had a policy of killing. However, he emphasised that modern power was based on bio-politics.
More recently, however, in non-Western colonial geographies, Achille Mbembe introduced the concept of necro-politics. Necro-politics has been translated as ‘the politics of death’, arguing that biopower alone is not enough. This concept has become one of the key concepts in academia. After the Holocaust and the Holocaust, the everyday life of Jews (their political and economic life) was entirely shaped by this process. Although many years have passed, this still continues to be a determining factor, from commemorations to their politics. The situation is similar for Armenians.
Eriz Semerjiyan, a historian working on the Armenian Genocide, conducted a research on the Armenians who were deported to Deir ez-Zor and lost their lives there. He found that although Armenians travelled to different parts of the world after the genocide, they returned to Deir ez-Zor and used it as a place of remembrance. Collecting bones together and taking them to the places they had travelled to turned this place into a place of memory. Semerjian uses a concept such as ‘the memory of the bone’. Although a century has passed, these events continue to affect the lives of people living today. The situation of our pioneers from the past, whom we still cannot face and whose grave sites we cannot find, affects our daily lives. These figures still haunt Kurdistan like ghosts and continue to exist as symbols of resistance.
There is still no comprehensive research on the consequences of war and conflict in Kurdistan. Studies such as detailed reports and research centres on the effects on health and psychology are very limited. However, all these experiences are turning into an organisation and a line of resistance.
"Legal organisations can make international applications; they can apply to the UN Commission on Missing Persons, to the ECtHR. Even if applications cannot be made for hundreds of people, great gains can be achieved even through a single case."
*What steps should civil society organisations, academics and international organisations take to protect the right to mourning of the Kurdish people?
We take a human rights-based approach and try to call on civil society and international organisations. As the Initiative for Respect and Justice for the Dead, we tried to bring together everyone in Turkey whose dead have been insulted or whose dead bodies have been neglected. This included Kurds, relatives of PKK members, those who support the resistance of the resistance fighters, Armenians, Jews, Assyrians and women's organisations. When women talked about the murder of women in the public sphere in Turkey as a result of colonial violence, the issue was treated as if it was a situation specific to Kurdistan. At that time, the Kurdish women's movement claimed the bodies of those killed under the name of ‘honour’. In Turkey, most of the murders of women remain unclaimed. Refugees were also included in this study.
In recent years, the refugee issue has become a bigger and bigger problem. The Aegean Sea has turned into a refugee graveyard. Working with some organisations in Greece, we tried to come together with legal institutions to identify the bodies on the islands. Issues such as the lack of ownership of the bodies of LGBT individuals, not being washed in gasilhouses, not being accepted by their families and violence even against their dead bodies were brought to the agenda. Academia and civil society have a great responsibility at this point. It is necessary to keep a record of this process. We learn about most of these violent incidents from the free press; without these records, we will never be able to see what happened.
Without the headline ‘Humanity is being dragged on the ground’, we would not be able to record this violence. Since there is so much denial, civil society needs to document and record this violence. Organisations in Kurdistan find it difficult to do this. MEBYADER tries to reach the funeral and the families, to fulfil religious obligations in an appropriate way, but they cannot always keep a record of this. Legal organisations can make international applications; they can apply to the UN Commission on Missing Persons, to the ECHR. Although applications cannot be made for hundreds of people, great gains can be achieved even through a single case.
These issues should not be viewed solely on the basis of human rights.
Tomorrow: Truth for social peace: World examples and lessons
