Turkey: Revisiting a flashpoint of the democratization process

Yigal Schleifer: 11/02/07

The most precious books in the one-room Umut bookshop, located in the southeastern Turkish city of Semdinli, are actually several volumes that have burnt edges and shredded covers smudged with soot. Kept in two brightly lit bookcases with glass doors, the books are the survivors of a grenade attack two years ago, the impact of which continues to be felt in the predominantly-Kurdish southeast region of Turkey.

The charred books are displayed along with a teapot pierced by shrapnel, while two small craters on the floor, marking where the grenades exploded, have been left untouched, giving the place the feel of both a bookstore and memorial. This is exactly how its owner, Seferi Yilmaz, wants it to be.

"I believe this is part of our history and I want it to be remembered," Yilmaz says. "The event gave me more responsibility. Before I was just a simple bookseller, but now I am on the international stage."

Yilmaz, 45, is only slightly exaggerating. The bombing of his bookstore, on November 9, 2005, was followed by several days of violent rioting throughout the southeast. The trial of those accused of the attack – two members of Turkey's security forces – led to a dramatic showdown between the Turkish government and the country's powerful military, and put the country's commitment to democratization and improving human rights to what is still an ongoing test.

"It's a very important case," says Emma Sinclair-Webb, a Human Rights Watch researcher on Turkey. "It was a real opportunity to investigate what certain elements of the state have been suspected of having done for a long time, which is take the law into their own hands."

Semdinli is only some 20 miles from the Iraqi border, where Turkey is currently building up its troops and threatening an invasion in pursuit of the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), who have staged numerous attacks against Turkish forces in recent months. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Although the possibility of a cross-border raid is again raising tensions in the region, many locals say they trace the changed atmosphere to the period following the bookstore bombing.

"Everything changed after Semdinli. Since then, people are worried that things will go back to the way they were before," says Ismail Arslan, a radio journalist in Yuksekova, a town near Semdinli. "It was a turning point. People were at the point that they started to believe in democracy, but after this, people started to again believe that there is a 'deep state' [an expression used in Turkey to describe shadowy elements of the state and security forces] and no democracy."

Yilmaz opened the Umut bookshop (the name means "hope" in Turkish) in 2001, after serving a 15-year prison sentence for being involved with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

"I read a lot of books while I was in prison and I believe an enlightened person is someone who will turn away from violence. I didn't open my bookshop for profit," Yilmaz says, speaking in his bookshop, which is located at the end of a dimly lit shopping arcade.

At the time of the bombing, Yilmaz and a helper were in the bookstore when he saw two hand grenades come flying through the open front door. Yilmaz was able to get out before the grenades exploded, but his helper – 29-year-old Mehmet Korkmaz – was killed. The grenades rendered the store a charred and shrapnel-pocked mess.

Locals quickly apprehended the man who threw the grenades, along with two accomplices, who turned out to be intelligence officers with Turkey's paramilitary gendarmerie. In the trunk of the officers' car, meanwhile, were more weapons, along with a list of names of what seemed like other targets maps detailing where these people lived and worked.

The attack on the bookstore had come on the heels of several other bombings during the preceding months in Semdinli and other places nearby, which led locals to fear that they were experiencing a return to the dark days of the 1980's and 90's, when security forces resorted to unscrupulous tactics in their fight against the PKK.

"What they were trying to do at the time of the bombing was to bring the area back to the violence of [the 80's and 90's], and now we see ourselves going back to the tensions of that time," says Emin Sari, a Kurdish political activist in Semdinli, whose name was among those found on the list in the trunk of the bookshop bombers' car.

Sari today runs an EU-funded women's center on the edge of Semdinli's scruffy downtown, made up of a collection of roughly built, two-story cement buildings. As Sari begins an interview with visiting journalists, two plainclothes policemen show up unannounced, taking down the journalists' details before leaving.

"There was some kind of hope that there would be a result out of the investigation of the bombing, but that hope was left unmet," Sari says.

The Turkish government initially acted resolutely regarding Semdinli, with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan promising to get to the bottom of the case, no matter where it led. An aggressive prosecutor from the nearby city of Van, Ferhat Sarikaya, took on the case, but soon ran into trouble when he stated that top-level military officials, including the current chief of staff, had supported covert illegal operations in the southeast.

Fearful of a clash with the military, the government took Sarikaya off the case, saying he had overstepped his bounds, while Turkey's Supreme Board of Prosecutors and Judges (HSYK) disbarred him for life.

Still, the case continued and in June 2006 the two officers charged in the bombing were found guilty and each sentenced to 39 years, five months and 10 days in jail. But this past May, Turkey's top appeals court quashed the verdict on procedural grounds, saying that since the two were arrested while in the line of duty, the case had to be dealt with by a military court.

"For the highest court to rule that is a big, retrograde step," says HRW's Sinclair-Webb. "These two people were caught red handed with an informant, as well, committing an illegal activity. This is not justifiable in the name of counter-terrorism. For a court to say this was counter terrorism and it should be tried in military court, makes it look like its condoning it."

Despite the setback, there is a sense of hope in Semdinli. Local authorities seem to have responded to the incident by working on improving infrastructure in the dusty town, building new roads and a bridge, which will make travel to and from Semdinli easier.

Yilmaz, the bookstore owner, was able to reopen with a no small amount of cheek. A new sign for his store, on Semdinli's main street, incorporates a hand grenade into it and proudly announces the shop as the site of the famous "Semdinli bombing."

Inside the shop, repainted a creamy yellow, except for the ceiling, which has been left pocked with shrapnel marks, the bookshelves are lined with books in both Turkish and Kurdish.

"He who loses hope, loses everything," Yilmaz says. "I wanted this place to be a place of hope for the future of the people squeezed between the mountains of Iran, Iraq and Turkey. I am hopeful for the future despite the chaos around us."

Editor's Note: Yigal Schleifer is a freelance journalist based in Istanbul.

Posted November 2, 2007 © Eurasianet