The 59,000 village guards, according to Interior Ministry figures, pose one of the biggest problems to the government’s recently announced Kurdish initiative. Currently the government does not have plans to abolish the system but is working on completely restructuring it. Half of the village guard contingent will be relieved of their weapons, and they will instead be paid for dealing with local village affairs.
The government sees revising the village guard system as a requirement for the success of its democratic initiative. According to a bill drafted by the Interior Ministry, half of the weapons distributed to village guards, whose numbers have at times reached 80,000, will be collected.
The government was prompted to revise the system after village guards were involved in the murder of 44 people last year in the village of Bilge in southeastern Mardin province. The focus on overhauling the system increased after a soldier was killed by village guards in January and when some guards were found to have sold their weapons to the outlawed PKK.
According to the bill, amendments will be made to provisions governing village guards in the Village Law, the Counterterrorism Law and the Weapons Law, facilitating the removal of a significant number of weapons distributed to the guards. Even though village guards, who support security forces in the fight against the PKK, will give up their weapons, they will continue to receive salaries from the state for taking care of village affairs such as forest and village rehabilitation.
Parliament was warned
The Interior Ministry drafted the bill to restructure the village guard system taking into account a report prepared by Parliament’s Human Rights Commission following the massacre in Bilge which reads: “While abolishing the temporary village guard system is not possible under current conditions, it is necessary to overhaul the institution in question in terms of its structure, function and hierarchy.”
According to the report, 123,476 people have served as temporary village guards since 1985, of whom 38,945 have been suspended for various violations. The report noted that there are 47,689 temporary village guards in the East and Southeast and 23,769 voluntary village guards. Temporary village guards are appointed by the Interior Ministry after nomination by the local governor’s office, while voluntary village guards are assigned by the district governor after being proposed by the village head (muhtar).
Civil society organizations favor abolishment over restructuring
Human rights organizations oppose the government’s decision to revise the system rather than abolish it. The Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) wants the village guard system to be completely scrapped; however, the Interior Ministry argues that’s its more important to rehabilitate the system, noting that any institution can have people who have violated the law.
In a report prepared in 2009, the Human Rights Association (İHD) claimed that 38 villages were razed, 294 armed attacks were committed, 244 people were killed and 562 people were tortured by village guards between 1992 and 2009. Last week, currently jailed senior PKK member Şemdin Sakık, who ordered an attack that led to the killing of 33 soldiers in Bingöl in 1993, suggested that village guards be assigned to the Border Control Agency, a proposal called unfeasible by the Interior Ministry.
The ministry is working on establishing a Border Control Agency with the EU and has decided that the planned 50,000 employees will be professionals. The level of education of village guards does not meet the criteria of the new agency.
The government anticipates that if the PKK is eliminated, many former members will return home and will probably encounter village guard resistance due to the fact that they have been at odds for years, making it mandatory that the village guard system be revised.
There are currently 7,614 village guards in Hakkari, 5,187 in Diyarbakır, 6,756 in Şırnak, 4,661 in Siirt, 2,887 in Batman, 2,511 in Bingöl, 3,730 in Bitlis, 3,323 in Mardin and 1,860 in Muş. The BDP argues that in order to accelerate the return home of PKK members, weapons must be removed from village guards.
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