THE DEATH OF TAHIR ELCI REVISITED #

I last wrote in this blog the day after Tahir Elci had been killed. I couldn’t attend his funeral but had to express my feelings. That was nearly four years ago. Since then many attempts have been made to secure some accountability, encourage some investigation, into his death. All have failed, notwithstanding substantial evidence based studies having been undertaken. 

In the early stages after his death interventions were made to try and secure a better investigation of the crime scene. 

Notwithstanding high level promises to ensure that an effective investigation was carried out, nothing happened. Meanwhile great changes were taking place in Turkey. Revocation of the peace process, the wholesale destruction of cities in South East Turkey during endless curfews, followed by the attempted coup and the devastating purge which has taken place since then. Tahir’s final contributions to the protection of human rights involved the processing of evidence of gross human rights abuses in Cizre and other south-eastern cities during the curfews. Millions of Kurds forced out of their homelands after the destruction of over 3,000 villages in the early 1990’s had migrated to the cities in south-east Turkey to make for themselves a new way of life to replace that which had been destroyed. There is a terrible tragedy in the almost untold story of that new life having been destroyed in 2015 and 2016 when their new communities were destroyed by a combination of Kurdish and government forces clashing in fierce fighting. All accounts suggest that the government responses were entirely disproportionate. Once again the Kurdish communities were “caught between two fires” and suffered the consequences. Ever since they have been trying to secure a remedy, domestically and internationally, which remains elusive.

Whilst all this has been going on the search for justice for Tahir has continued unsuccessfully. Much energy has been spent reconstructing the crime scene and trying to write the narrative of what really happened. The report from Forensic Architects at the end of 2018 was compelling. Having painstakingly reconstructed the scene they concluded that one of the police officers on the scene must have been the perpetrator. Yet still there was no constructive response from the prosecutors in Diyarbakir. Time and again brave lawyers have challenged this demonstrable failure of the state to comply with its obligation to conduct an effective and independent investigation. Time and again they have failed to secure any effective intervention. 

And now? Well now in September 2019 we have the most troubling report of all of a systematic attempt to destroy forensic evidence which might have solved the riddle of his death. Reports of the DNA destruction and corruption of the evidence

What comes next? When will the Turkish authorities take any responsibility for this abomination? What can we all do to force them? The international legal community has made various interventions. To date with zero success. We still wait, and more importantly his family still wait, for any acknowledgment that there has been a terrible failure in the process of protecting citizens from arbitrary killing. We all need to redouble our efforts to secure some sort of justice for Tahir Elci and his family. It is not insignificant that this is written on the day that the Grand Chamber in Strasbourg has heard the appeal in the Demirtas case. 

Tony Fisher

18th September 2019