Uludere panel to release final report without identifying responsible party

ISTANBUL – Doğan News Agency

DHA photo

A parliamentary subcommittee is set to release its final report next week on a military airstrike that killed 34 civilians in Uludere on Dec. 28, 2011, the head of the commission has said, while admitting that the document would not identify the person who ordered the raid.

“This might be an innocent security operation or a mistake, we cannot know that. People who died there were innocent for sure, and their pain is great but when we evaluated this operation in a security perspective, a balance was needed. There is no possibility of finding the name of the person who ordered the attack,” the head of the commission, İlhan Şener, said yesterday, adding that the draft report would be delivered to the commission’s members on Feb. 28.

The draft report will not point the finger at any military or civilian authority, committee members said, noting that the Diyarbakır Public Prosecutor’s Office would be responsible for apportioning blame where appropriate.

“Who gave the order of attack? This was not our business. There is no possibility to reach such a conclusion out of the documents we accessed. We cannot claim to know everything [about the incident]; maybe we do not,” Şener said.

“A coordination error” between intelligence units and security forces was said to be the reason for the killings.

The Turkish military has previously said the civilians were initially mistaken for members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), but according to experts, the images of the group taken by Herons, unmanned aerial vehicles, would have made it impossible to mistake the villagers for militants.