UNSOLVED DISAPPEARANCES

Relatives of people who disappeared for political reasons, the Commission against Disappearances in Detention of the Human Rights Foundation (IHD) and dozens of supporters demanded to include the file of M. Selim Acar into the Ergenekon trial. Acar disappeared in detention on 20 August 1994.

Relatives, friends and supporters of the disappeared came together for the 284^th time at the Galatasaray Square in Istanbul. Yorgo Perdikis, Secretary General of the Cyprus Ecologists and Environmentalists Party, was among this week's supporters.

Solidarity from Cyprus

Perdikis from Cyprus said in a statement, "I am coming from a place which has suffered the same anguish because of the disappeared, both for the Turkish and the Greek Cypriots. I hope that the Turkish government will give you satisfying answers and that it will develop solutions which will carry the country into the light. I offer you my solidarity".

IHD official Leman Yurtsever told Perdikis about Prime Minister Erdoğan's previously made statement that 'the relatives of the disappeared where being used by some people' and that the Prime Minister said in Diyarbakır on Friday (3 September): "The mothers should not cry, their grief is our grief." Yurtsever added: "We are questioning his honesty".

Hanım Tosun demonstrated before U2 concert

Hanım Tosun from the Liceli district in Diyarbakır (south-eastern Turkey), wife of Fehmi Tosun, joint the gathering on Saturday (4 September) as she does every week to ask the state for the fate of her husband. Fehmi Tosun was kidnapped by people carrying walkie-talkies in 1995 and was not heard of ever since.

The Irish band U2 included a note related to Tosun on the cover of their "Pop" album released in 1997 reading "Remember Fehmi Tosun disappeared in Turkey in October 1995". U2 will give their first concert in Turkey tonight (6 September) in Istanbul. bianet asked Hanım Tosun if she was going to meet Bono to express her gratitude. She smiled and replied, "I will definitely go to the concert".

"It is not enough for the state to accept their guilt..."

This week's press release was read out by Muzaffer Yedigül, brother of disappeared Nurettin Yedigül. Yedigül stated that M. Selim Acar was asked to hand his ID to some policemen and that he was then threatened and forcefully made to enter a white or grey vehicle without a plate. Yedigül said that this happened right in front of Acar's son İhsan Acar and another person with the initials I.E.

It was furthermore said in the statement that an eyewitness had last seen Acar with his feet and hands being handcuffed, his eyes covered with a blindfold and his mouth gagged. The Bismil District Governor apparently told Acar's sister Meliha, "He is in the hands of the state, I cannot do anything about that".

The state submitted their defence to the European Court of Human Rights before the case was concluded on 12 March 2002. They claimed the following: "We are sad. We accept the unregistered deprivations from freedom and the insufficient investigations into the allegations of disappearances to be a violation of the right to an effective application and the right to life, to freedom and security as well as to the right to an effective application, as in this current case".

The IHD and the relatives of the disappeared criticized that it was not enough to have the state accept its guilt. They demanded to relveal the truth and to disclose the perpetrators: "We will never stop our struggle until this mentality will have changed, until the fate of our disappeared [relatives] will have been revealed and the responsible people will have been prosecuted". (EÖ/VK)