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Governor: Authorities to act on villagers’ accidental deaths
Four villagers were collecting thyme when soldiers opened fire on them. While two of them, Ali Dalmış and Mustafa Fil, died at the scene of the incident, one villager was injured and another was able to escape.
The Interior Ministry charged two inspectors with carrying out an examination into the incident. “Interior Ministry and judicial authorities will take the necessary action. We wish to see no such incidents in the future,” Lekesiz told the Anatolia news agency, noting that the place where the incident took place is a militarily sensitive area. Lekesiz also stated the villagers ignored calls from the gendarmes to stop.
Two villagers were shot when gendarmes in a village in Hatay, who said they thought the villagers were terrorists, opened fire. The families of the victims and the only survivor say they will press charges against those responsible for the deadly mistake |
Lekesiz visited the families of the slain villagers and Mehmet Sak, the injured villager, at the Mustafa Kemal University’s Medical Center on Monday with the provincial gendarmerie commander, Col. Vedat Çolak, and Hatay Police Chief Ragıp Kılıç and attended funeral ceremonies for Dalmış and Fil yesterday.
Seventy-four-year-old Sak said they had climbed the mountain to collect thyme early in the morning when they heard gunshots all of a sudden. “We did not understand what was going on. I heard a gunshot and was injured. I didn’t see who opened fire,” Sak said.
İbrahim Yalçın, 60, who was able to escape the scene without injury, described how he lay down and hid, saying: “Then I threw myself into a nearby creek. I could not get out of the creek for a while. Later I crept out and went home. I don’t know what my friends did. At that time, I could not understand who opened fire and why.”
In an incident earlier this month 11 soldiers were killed by Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorists in Hakkari. The commander of the unit said security cameras captured images of individuals approaching the border unit but that at the time they believed they were either shepherds or smugglers.
Fahri Kır, the head of the military’s internal security operations, said last week at General Staff headquarters that soldiers and other security officers can hardly distinguish villagers, who climb in mountainous places, especially, after temperatures rise, from terrorists in the mountains.
Recalling the bloody mistake that led to the deaths of nine soldiers and Kır’s statement, Star daily columnist Şamil Tayyar yesterday criticized the military in his column and asked Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ to explain the situation and encouraged the government to call the military to account in order to stop bloodshed.
The families of the villagers who were killed were upset by the circumstances of the incident. They went to the Council of Forensic Medicine (ATK) in Adana to recover the bodies of their family members.
The son of villager Dalmış, Murat Dalmış, said they will not forget about the incident and will file a complaint with the public prosecutor. “On which mountain did they ever see a 65-year-old terrorist. It could have been a forest, but they cannot say that they could not distinguish a civilian. It’s impossible,” he said yesterday in Adana.
While noting that he knows the region very well, Dalmış said the authorities did not know what to say about the accident. “The place [where the villagers were killed and injured] is a picnic area. If it is dangerous, then why do they let people climb there? People still go to that place. We will not let this incident go,” he said, claiming that the officers opened fire 20 meters from the villagers.
Sak’s son, Hasan Sak, also the nephew of Dalmış who was killed in the incident, said the place is generally foggy and while they don’t want military officers to get hurt, the mistake is still unacceptable. “Our relatives and my father went there with a car. They walked 500 to 600 steps after getting out of the car. Then this accident occurred,” he said.
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