Turkish lawmaker documents 73 alleged abductions, disappearances since 2015

Black vans have become the symbols of the abduction and disappearance in Turkey’s post-coup crackdown targeting the Gülen movement.

A Turkish opposition lawmaker has documented 73 alleged abductions and disappearances since 2015, including people who remain missing years later and others who resurfaced after months in police custody and said they had been held at secret locations and tortured, the TR724 news website reported.

The report, compiled by Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, a lawmaker from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), covers cases involving former public servants, teachers, journalists, political activists and students. In a number of cases those who reappeared said they had been abducted by people identifying themselves as police officers or other state officials and subjected to torture, threats or pressure to become informants before being released or transferred to official custody.

The report says the fate of several people remains unknown despite complaints by their families and evidence that in some cases included surveillance footage and witness accounts. It says investigations frequently failed to identify those responsible or establish what happened to the missing people.

Among those still missing is Yusuf Bilge Tunç, who disappeared in Ankara on August 6, 2019. The United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances transmitted his case to the Turkish government under its urgent-action procedure that year. Human rights organizations have said Tunç was one of seven men who disappeared in 2019 in cases they suspected were enforced disappearances. The other six eventually surfaced in police custody, while Tunç’s whereabouts remain unknown.

Another unresolved case is Mustafa Özgür Gültekin, then an employee of Turkey’s Competition Authority, the government agency responsible for enforcing competition and antitrust rules. Gültekin disappeared in Ankara in December 2016. His family obtained surveillance footage showing that he had been followed by several vehicles and, after leaving a market, was surrounded and forced into a van, according to parliamentary records and human rights groups. His fate is unknown.

Ayhan Oran, a former employee of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT), is also listed among those whose whereabouts are unknown. His family said he was last seen leaving his residential compound in Ankara on November 1, 2016.

Other cases cited in the report involve people who disappeared for months before unexpectedly turning up in government custody.

Gökhan Türkmen, a former public employee, disappeared in February 2019 and resurfaced in police custody nine months later. At a court hearing in February 2020, Türkmen said men wearing police vests had abducted him, taken him to an undisclosed detention site and held him for 271 days, where he said he was tortured and forced to sign a prepared statement. He also said people identifying themselves as intelligence officials later visited him in prison and pressured him to withdraw his account.

Türkmen was one of six men who disappeared in early 2019 and subsequently resurfaced in police custody. Amnesty International said Turkish authorities had denied that Türkmen and another of the men, Mustafa Yılmaz, were in official custody during the months they were missing. Yılmaz reappeared in police custody after eight months.

The cases prompted concern beyond Turkey. Human Rights Watch said in 2020 that it had examined 16 cases since 2017 in which families, or in some instances the victims themselves, alleged that people had been abducted and forcibly disappeared by government agents for extended periods of time. The organization said Turkish authorities had failed to effectively investigate credible allegations.

The Turkish government has denied allegations that authorities unlawfully detain or disappear people. In a response cited by Turkey’s Human Rights Association, the government told a UN working group that unlawful deprivation of liberty was prohibited under Turkish law and that the powers of public authorities were governed by legislation consistent with the country’s international obligations.

Many of the most prominent cases occurred during the sweeping crackdown that followed a failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in July 2016. A number of those who disappeared were former government employees dismissed by emergency decree or people accused of links to the faith-based Gülen movement.

Erdoğan has targeted followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since corruption investigations in December 2013 implicated him as well as some members of his family and inner circle. He dismissed the probes as a Gülenist conspiracy and designated the movement as a terrorist organization in May 2016, intensifying a sweeping crackdown after a coup attempt in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of orchestrating. The movement denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.

Gergerlioğlu’s compilation, however, extends beyond people accused of Gülen links. It includes journalists, left-wing activists, members of opposition political organizations and university students who alleged that they were forced into vehicles, interrogated, threatened or assaulted and later released.

One of the earliest cases concerns Kadir Örnek, then an Ankara official with the left-wing Labor Party (EMEP). Örnek said four people forced him into a car near his home in June 2015, covered his head and questioned him for about 90 minutes before releasing him. He said his captors threatened him and told him to end his political and labor union activities.

Gergerlioğlu’s team compiled the cases using accounts from families and lawyers, court decisions, human rights reports, news coverage and available visual evidence. The report does not claim that every incident on the list has been legally established as an enforced disappearance, and the cases vary significantly in their circumstances and available evidence.

Under international law an enforced disappearance generally involves a person being deprived of liberty by state agents or by people acting with state authorization or support, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the detention or disclose the person’s fate or whereabouts.

The report calls for authorities to determine the fate of those who remain missing and conduct effective and independent investigations into the allegations and those responsible.