TURKEY: MARDIN MASSACRE PUTS VILLAGE GUARDS IN

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ANKARA 000759

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/28/2019
TAGS: PGOV PHUM PREL OSCE TU
SUBJECT: TURKEY: MARDIN MASSACRE PUTS VILLAGE GUARDS IN
THE SPOTLIGHT (AGAIN)

Classified By: Adana Principal Officer Eric Green for reasons 1.4(b,d)

This is a Consulate Adana cable.


1. (C) SUMMARY: As the Kurdish issue moves to the forefront
of Turkey's domestic policy debate, what to do -- if anything
-- with the village guards has reemerged as an important
piece of the puzzle. Established in the mid-1980s as a local
militia to aid the Turkish military in its operations against
the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK),the village
guards have been frequently criticized for their alleged
involvement in criminal activities and human rights abuses,
as well as reinforcing tribal social structures in the
Kurdish Southeast. Village guard members' involvement in a
May 5 incident in a Kurdish village, in which 44 civilians --
including women and children -- were killed, has cast a
renewed spotlight on the institution. While members of the
state bureaucracy and Turkish nationalists defend the
institution as vital for security, Kurdish nationalists
insist abolishing the guards is essential for bringing peace
to the region. As the GOT contemplates its next steps on the
Kurdish issue, the village guards will stand as a potent
example of the perils of using "divide and conquer" tactics.
END SUMMARY


2. (C) The May 5 killing of 44 civilians -- including 16
women and 6 children -- during an engagement ceremony in the
Kurdish village of Bilge (Zanqirt) in the southeastern
province of Mardin over an alleged family dispute by masked
gunman has brought the village guard system into the
spotlight. The assailants were village guards and reportedly
used weapons that were supplied by the government. In the
wake of renewed calls for the village guards' abolishment,
Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek on May 8 told the press
that "the village guard system may be reformed or fully
abolished -- (but the incident should not put all village
guards under suspicion." Pro-Kurdish Democratic Society
Party (DTP) co-chairman Ahmet Turk claimed that "this
violence would never have happened had the state not issued
guns to them." On May 10, Interior Minister Besir Atalay
walked back Cicek's comments, however, noting that the guards
played an important security role and that aspects could be
criticized, discussed, or overhauled, "but frankly, there is
no work to abolish the system."


ORIGINS
--------------


3. (C) The current version of the "Temporary and Voluntary
Village Guards" (Gecici ve Gonullu Koy Korucular) was set up
by the Turkish government as a local militia in villages in
southeastern Turkey to protect against attacks and reprisals
of the terrorist-insurgent Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
They were essentially a reactivation of earlier local defense
forces established in 1924 to repel raids by bandits in the
lawless days that followed Turkey's War of Independence.
These in turn had their roots in the Kurdish Hamidiye
regiments established by the Ottoman government in the late
19th Century. The current village guard system was introduced
in 22 provinces in the East and Southeast in 1985. A
"voluntary village guard" system was added in 1993 in order
to supplement the program.

4. (C) "Temporary" village guards receive salaries, weapons
and health benefits from the state -- although these, like
their equipment, are at a lower standard than those for the
military or gendarmerie (Jandarma). Voluntary village guards
receive weapons and limited benefits, but no salary. The
village guards work under the supervision of the local
Jandarma commander. Concrete numbers for the village guards
are hard to come by. Although some press reports indicate
that they numbered around 90,000 or more at the height of the
PKK insurgency in the mid-1990s, in 2003 the Ministry of
Interior reported to parliament that there were 58,571
temporary and 12,279 voluntary guards. According to
information recently posted on a pro-PKK Kurdish website, the
temporary village guard numbers break down by province as
follows: Diyarbakir 5,187; Sirnak 6,756; Batman 2,887;
Bingol 2,511; Bitlis 3,730; Mardin 3,323; Mus 1,860; Siirt
4,661; Van 7,320; Hakkari 7,614; Tunceli 368; Adiyaman 1,485;

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Agri 1,838; Ardahan 91, Elazig 2,083; Gaziantep 555; Igdir
362; Kilis 33; Kahramanmaras 2,236; Kars 558; Malatya 1,365;
and Sanliurfa 934. The large numbers of guards in stable
provinces such as Kahramanmaras and Adiyaman suggest in some
areas the program is as much about patronage as it is
security. The reported 500 Turkish lira (about USD 340) a
month in salary represents significant money in the poverty
stricken rural areas of Turkey's Southeast.

REINFORCING TRIBAL TIES
--------------


5. (C) Although the village guards have undoubtedly proved
valuable to the Turkish military in its operations against
the PKK because of their knowledge of the region and of the
local language, critics have decried the fact that the
institution has helped prop up the traditional feudal, tribal
system in the Kurdish Southeast, particularly in provinces
with large land owners. Ankara tried to discourage the local
tribes from lending their support to the PKK by employing
them as a local security force. The local chieftains
received arms and salary for each guard that they enlisted,
usually keeping a certain percentage of the salary of each
guard for themselves. A scholar has noted that the tribal
chieftains, crucial role in the negotiation process with
state officials, as well as the distribution of benefits
enormously strengthened their social, political, and economic
influence. It also created a "secret" network that has linked
civil bureaucrats, state security officials, and organized
crime. The lone survivor of the infamous 1996 "Suslurluk
incident" -- an automobile accident which revealed links
between state officials, the police, and organized crime
figures -- was then Sanliurfa parliamentary deputy Sedat
Bucak, a senior member of the Bucak tribe, which has been a
major guard recruiter.

6. (C) There are few restrictions to becoming a village guard
other than age guidelines and background checks -- and tribal
affiliation is a key element of those background checks.
Because tribes exert political influence on the local
branches of ruling parties and maintain good relations with
the state bureaucracy, they can throw their weight behind
their members in the recruitment process. Similarly,
individuals connected to tribes historically linked with the
PKK are weeded out.

7. (C) In the early 1990s, the guards became intertwined with
the GOT's controversial policy of village evacuations, which
resulted in the forced migration of at least one million
people. The government used offers to join the village guard
system as a litmus test to determine which villages were
"pro-state." Refusing to participate in the system was
considered by the security forces as an indication of active
or passive support for the PKK, and evacuation and
destruction of the village usually resulted. The guards'
role in the evacuations forever colors the views of many
Kurds towards the institution. And because village guard
families frequently moved in to occupy evacuated villages,
poisonous grievances over property compounded the PKK-guard
and inter-tribe rivalries.

8. (C) On 15 May, acting DTP Adana Provincial Chairman Ahmet
Kilic told poloff that the village guards were the biggest
obstacle to the return of internal migrants to their
villages. He claimed that 90 percent (undoubtedly an
exaggerated figure) of migrants wished to return to their
villages. However, former villagers did not feel safe
returning to their land. Kilic claimed that with the village
guards "living and sleeping with a gun at their side," the
state had fostered a culture of violence in the region.
Kilic said that the village guard system needed to be
abolished and the guards be given other employment.

9. (C) Some experts believe the village evacuations in the
1990s and the competition between the PKK and the state
shifted the economic structure of the mainly rural Southeast
away from independent farming and animal husbandry to
reliance on government salaries from the village guard
system. Some estimate that the program supports a half
million people when extended family members are included. In
a May 20 conversation with poloff, Dicle University Sociology
Professor Mazhar Bagli agreed that the village guard system
had upset economic and social balances in southeastern
Turkey. However, given the economic impact, the government

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could not just abolish the system, he argued. Alternative
employment, such as planting trees, needed to be found for
the guards.

HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES
--------------


10. (SBU) The village guard system has long been criticized
by human rights organizations. The international
organization Human Rights Watch has called village guards "a
corrupt and corrupting system." The guards' right to carry
arms, inform officials about suspected separatist activities,
and kill in the name of the state has made them a powerful
force in the region. A recent report by the Turkish Human
Rights Association (IHD) stated that between January 1992 and
March 2009 village guards committed various human rights
violations, including forced evacuation, burning villages,
kidnapping, and rape. In the last seven years, village
guards have killed 51 people and wounded 83, according to the
IHD report. The local press reports that about 5000 village
guards have been implicated in crimes in the past 18 years.

11. (C) On May 18 President of the Mardin chapter of the IHD,
Erdal Uzun, and his fellow attorney Huseyin Cihangir told
poloff that the recent Bilge murders stemmed directly from
the village guard system. They noted that the system
originated in the Ottoman Hamidiye regiments that were
involved in the 1915 Armenian massacres (which he termed as a
"genocide"). Uzun and Cihangir described the village guards
as a "crime apparatus" and claimed that the guards in Bilge
were involved in narcotics trafficking and were also
illegally tapping the Kirkuk-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which runs
through the area. The system gave state-sanctioned
"immunity" to village guards to conduct crimes, revenge
killings, and to otherwise run their small fiefdoms as they
saw fit. Neither attorney believed the Bilge incident was
just a simple "honor killing" involving a feud over a bride.
It was too well organized and conducted, they said. Uzun
asserted that if a witness had not escaped, the murders would
have been blamed on the PKK. He also claimed that they had
heard reports that one of the main perpetrators of the Bilge
murders was having tea with the local Jardarma commander a
half hour before the incident.


12. (C) COMMENT: Despite the problems with the village
guards, the state bureaucracy and security forces appear to
remain committed to the system as long as the PKK operates,
and perhaps beyond. Mardin Deputy Governor Niyazi Ulugolge
told poloff on May 18 that the village guards will remain as
long as the security situation dictates. In addition, the
village guard system plays a vital role in providing a fiscal
subsidy to an economically deprived region. As the
government contemplates measures such as reintegration or
amnesty for former PKK members, the question of what to do
with the village guards will become more acute. Unless there
is a parallel process for disarming the village guards and
establishing the rule of law in the rural Southeast, then the
bloody guard-PKK rivalry will merely reappear in another
form. "Divide and conquer" is an expedient way to maintain
stability; but in this case it is likely to be a major
obstacle to long-term peace.

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