Pres­i­dent Recep Tayyip Erdoğan par­doned a man found guilty of par­tic­i­pa­tion in the mas­sacre in Sivas in 1993 that caused the death of 35 people.


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Ahmet Turan Kılıç is one of the authors of the Sivas massacre.

These assas­si­na­tions occurred when a hate-filled crowd set fire to the Madı­mak Hotel in the province of Sivas in cen­tral Ana­to­lia on July 2 1993, killing 33 intel­lec­tu­als and two hotel employ­ees. Ahmet Turan Kılıç was sen­tenced to death then; with the abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 2002, his sen­tence was com­mut­ed to incom­press­ible perpetuity.

Last Jan­u­ary 31, Erdo­gan lift­ed the sen­tence imposed on this man – who is now 86 years old, because of “the health prob­lems affect­ing him” – in con­for­mi­ty with para­graph 16 of arti­cle 104 in the Turk­ish Constitution.

The attack against the Madı­mak Hotel tar­get­ed a group of artists and aca­d­e­mics par­tic­i­pat­ing in a con­fer­ence orga­nized ty the Cul­tur­al Foun­da­tion Pir Sul­tan Abdal (PSAKD), an Ale­vi orga­ni­za­tion. The event took place at a time when writer Aziz Nesin, who was among the guests, had become a pub­lic tar­get for his Turk­ish trans­la­tion of Salman Rushdie’s Satan­ic Vers­es. Among those killed in the crim­i­nal fire of the hotel were poets Metin Altıok, Behçet Aysan and Uğur Kay­nar, writer Asım Bezir­ci and the Dutch anthro­pol­o­gist Cari­na Cuan­na, as well as pop­u­lar Ale­vi musi­cians Muh­lis Akar­su and Nes­i­mi Çimen. A crowd pro­voked by a cer­tain num­ber of local polit­i­cal lead­ers and assem­bled out­side the hotel accused the con­fer­ence par­tic­i­pants of being “unbe­liev­ers”.

Oth­er than the 35 peo­ple who died in the mas­sacre, two demon­stra­tors in the crowd out­side the hotel, where the events led to the fire and who were watch­ing the hotel while the peo­ple inside burned and called for help, also died in the fire.
Requests by the fam­i­lies of the vic­tims that the Madı­mak become a “muse­um of shame” were nev­er acknowl­edged. Nonethe­less, this build­ing became a sym­bol of the dis­crim­i­na­tion con­fronting Ale­vis in Turkey. It was expro­pri­at­ed in 2010 and trans­formed into a “Sci­ence and Cul­ture Center”…


Drawing by Sefer Selvi. Evrensel 2.2.2020
(Refers to photos showing men in the crowd carrying jerrycans of gasoline)
The man convicted of the massacre in Sivas is pardoned. 
- “There, you are free. You can gather your personal belongings and leave.”

And other sick prisoners?

The num­ber of ill and aged pris­on­ers sub­ject­ed to shame­ful con­di­tions of incar­cer­a­tion is so long it would pro­vide a list even longer than that of jailed jour­nal­ists. A great part of these detainees are of Kur­dish ori­gin and their deten­tion to long sen­tences has car­ried across regimes, from those of the army to the cur­rent one. Oth­er cas­es are more recent, of per­sons con­demned who were already ill and sen­tenced under the sacro­sanct label of “pro­pa­gan­da for or belong­ing to a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion”. Oth­er cas­es involve LGBTs… In all these cas­es, the famous arti­cle 104 of the Con­sti­tu­tion seems to be ignored.

But here, as soon as reli­gious pres­sures inter­vene, and in this case for a “con­tro­ver­sial” mas­sacre in the eyes of the big­ots in pow­er, the call to the Con­sti­tu­tion crowns a well-orches­trat­ed cam­paign. In order to do so, the vic­tims are cru­ci­fied once again. Noth­ing here but the most humane of decisions.

Zeynep Altıok Akatlı who lost her father the poet Metin Altıok in Sivas under­lined that Pres­i­dent Erdoğan had said the pre­scrip­tion on the Sivas mas­sacre was “a good thing” and declared that the assas­sins were “vic­tims”. She added that, when it proved impos­si­ble to have this man lib­er­at­ed for old age and ill­ness, a tri­al was opened against the med­ical exam­in­ers… “Now, he has been par­doned through the Pres­i­den­t’s author­i­ty.” She men­tioned pris­on­ers who are tru­ly ill, “the sys­tem does not work for scores of sick and aged pris­on­ers and pro­tects oth­ers with spe­cial care,” she said with indig­na­tion. “I have a ques­tion! This man would be the last sick and aged man in jail, thus deserv­ing a spe­cial amnesty? If his life per­mits, he might even become a deputy!”

What do the jurists say?

Ahmet Turan Kılıç

Ahmet Turan Kılıç

Lawyer and politi­cian Şenal Sarıhan, a lawyer and defendor of rights, has fol­lowed the Sivas case for 27 years and sheds some light on Erdoğan’s deci­sion. She reminds us that dur­ing the month pre­ced­ing Erdoğan’s par­don, the media at his ser­vice led an intense and well pre­pared cam­paign in sup­port of Ahmet Turan Kılıç’s lib­er­a­tion. Dec­la­ra­tions attrib­uted to his son reit­er­at­ed that Ahmet Turan Kılıç was in no way con­nect­ed to the mas­sacre, that he was inno­cent. His age and pur­port­ed state of health were stressed. Şenal Sarıhan adds “there was nev­er the slight­est ques­tion of a report from the health com­mis­sion in his case. I under­lined this when dis­cus­sions began con­cern­ing his even­tu­al liberation.”

The lawyer adds “Pub­lic opin­ion knows that some of the con­demned authors of the crime have not even been arrest­ed in these 27 years. It also knows that the vic­tims’ kin are deeply wound­ed by the behav­ior and sub­jec­tive com­ments of the entourage of those in pow­er who almost attempt to prove that the authors of the mas­sacre are those who per­ished in the fire, and not those who set the fire…” She decares that this man is not in any way “inno­cent” as his son claims. “It was obvi­ous that the absence of a legal basis for a par­don, such as a health report, was going to deep­en the suf­fer­ing of the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. Final­ly, fol­low­ing the announce­ment of this deci­sion dat­ed Jan­u­ary 30 2020, we learned there exist­ed a legal med­i­cine report, bear­ing noth­ing but a num­ber and a date. We have no infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing its con­tent, so we have filed a request in order to find out more.”

In a respon­si­ble ges­ture in order to inform the pub­lic con­cern­ing the true iden­ti­ty of this man, described by some as a “grand­fa­ther” and stress­ing his “inno­cent” and almost hero­ic char­ac­ter, the lawyer shares the tes­ti­mo­ny gath­ered con­cern­ing the accused, tak­en from the tri­al pro­ceed­ings reg­is­tered at Ankara’s Tri­bunal N° 1. Sev­er­al wit­ness­es declared before the court that the accused “was there from the begin­ning to the end of the events and act­ing as a crowd leader,” that he was chant­i­ng slo­gans such as “Allahu akbar”, “Aziz (Nesin) the dev­il”, “Sivas will be Aziz’ tomb”, “Even if they shed our blood vic­to­ry to Islam”, “The sharia will come, the per­se­cu­tion will cease”, that he “called the peo­ple to Jihad”, that he “was also among those throw­ing stones against the hotel’s win­dows”, that “he was always in the fore­front, incit­ing, lead­ing, des­ig­nat­ing the tar­gets, that he facil­i­tat­ed breach­ing the bar­ri­ers and helped in the task of the authors in the first degree who destroyed the vehi­cles parked in front of the hotel, ram­sacked the inte­ri­or of the build­ing and allowed the start of the fire.”

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In fact, it was on the basis of these many tes­ti­monies as well as of the videos record­ed dur­ing the mas­sacre that Ahmet Turan Kil­iç had been sen­tenced for “par­tic­i­pa­tion, aid­ing and abetting.”

A guilty man who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the vio­lent loss of 35 lives is now free. “The vic­tims had no right to live, to grow old nor to close their eyes in their home,” says Şenal Sarıhan. “The authors of this mas­sacre did not know the vic­tims per­son­al­ly. Their hos­til­i­ty was thus fed by their con­vic­tions against sci­ence, sec­u­lar­i­ty, broth­er­hood, and their beliefs. It is a crime com­mit­ted against human­i­ty. Can one par­don the author of such a type of crime? No log­ic in law based on human rights can accept this. Even less so when such an act is com­mit­ted with­out the least expres­sion of remorse.”

In order to know more, you may read these three arti­cles by Eti­enne Copeaux (in French)
Sketch N° 67 Sivan July 2 1993 – (Fab­ri­cat­ing the enemy)
Sivas, 2 juil­let 1993 — La fab­ri­ca­tion de l’ennemi
Sketch N° 68 – (Aziz Nesin the Athe­ist) L’athée Aziz Nesin 
Sketch N° 69 – (July 2 1993 — The account) 2 juil­let 1993 – Récit


Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
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