Narin’s disappearance and murder are political. She’s not a girl being snatched and killed by one person, but a victim of a much bigger picture that is not clear yet, but shows horrifying contours. The demand for justice, exclaimed from thousands of throats on Sunday night in Diyarbakır, is not a demand born just of sympathy and horror, but also of deeply rooted anger towards a system that enables crimes like this – and has decades of practice in covering them up and letting the perpetrators go unpunished.
Fréderike Geerdink
Little Narin Güran, who had been missing since 21 August, has been found dead. Her remains were discovered in a bag in a stream less than two kilometers from where she lived in a village close to Diyarbakır (Amed) city in southeast Turkey. The 8-year-old was found on Sunday morning. Calls for justice are being made by civil society organisations, including women’s groups, the Human Rights Association, the Diyarbakır Bar Association, the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party, the local Republican People’s Party (CHP) MP Sezgin Tanrıkulu and others. These calls are explicitely political.
Narin’s body was found in a bag covered with stones and branches in the Eğertutmaz stream after a new tip had been received. This raised questions, as the stream had been meticulously searched several times already since Narin’s disappearance. The body had, in other words, been hidden elsewhere first, as the prosecutor also said. Some people suggest the perpetrators initially may have thought attention for the disappearance would subside and they’d get away with it, but decided to let Narin’s remains be found once they realised the disappearance remained high on the agenda.
Constant surveillance
This is speculation, but the questions being raised are sincere. There are more. As Medya News reported, the tiny village where Narin disappeared is under constant surveillance by a military outpost that monitors the area with cameras, leading locals to believe footage of the girl’s abduction or disappearance may exist but remain undisclosed.
Furthermore, she disappeared on the way home from a religious course of the Menzil sect, that is known to be close to the government, strengthening suspicions that state forces may be linked to the possible perpetrators. Since the state is known also to be linked to criminal groups, it is suggested that organ trafficking or abduction as retribution for a family debt, for example, could have played a role in Narin’s disappearance and death. No facts on this have emerged yet, as the investigation is obviously ongoing.
Menzil sect
It may sound like conspiracy all over, but the suggestions can’t be that easily dismissed. The surveillance cameras are actually there, the links between the government, religious sects and criminal networks are commonly known. In Kurdistan, such networks are stronger and more protected because they are used against the Kurdish political movement.
Part of these networks is Hüdapar, a small religious party active in Bakur (Kurdistan in Turkey) that is in a coalition with the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) and ultra-nationalist National Movement Party (MHP) coalition, and has a history of state-supported violence. Is is linked to the violent Hizbullah (not connected to Lebanese Hizbullah), which is again intertwined with the religious Menzil sect. At least part of Narin’s family are known to be Hüdapar supporters. Some of the 23 people who were detained in connection with the murder on Sunday, belong to Narin’s family. Her uncle has been under arrest for several days. Interestingly, the long-time AKP MP for Diyarbakır, Galip Ensarioğlu, said that he has known the Güran family for four decades, and that it’s not true that all of the family are Hizbullah, because for example, one of the cousins is active in the AKP.
Point-scoring
An official of Hüdapar paid a condolence visit to the family, and stated: “This is not our culture but the culture of Europe, America and Israel”, and said that how this culture ended up where it did [in Diyarbakır] needs to be investigated. With this, he suggests the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is involved, as these groups always claim (and wider Turkish society believes at some level) that the Kurdish armed movement is a project of foreign powers meant to weaken and divide Turkey – a deeply-rooted fear in Turkey dating back to after the First World War, when large swaths of land that are now Turkey were occupied by the UK, France and other Western powers. Dragging Israel into the equation is currently good for point-scoring. But in Bakur, nobody believes all this so I don’t know who Hüdapar is trying to fool.
Narin’s disappearance and murder are political. She’s not a girl being snatched and killed by one person, but a victim of a much bigger picture that is not clear yet, but shows horrifying contours. The demand for justice, exclaimed from thousands of throats on Sunday night in Diyarbakır, is not a demand born just of sympathy and horror, but also of deeply rooted anger towards a system that enables crimes like this – and has decades of practice in covering them up and letting the perpetrators go unpunished.
The determination with which several organisations have vowed to do everything to not let anybody get away with this crime is encouraging. Let’s hope this time somehow the justice system will produce results. No, let’s not hope but struggle for it.
Let me end this column with a slogan I heard in the protesting crowd in Amed: Zarok jiyan e, jiyan namire – A child is life, life is immortal.
Fréderike Geerdink is an independent journalist. Follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her acclaimed weekly newsletter Expert Kurdistan