No fantasies to be made over Uludere: Panel head

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

A group of deputies from each party visit the site of the attack and meet with the victims’ families. AA photo

The authorities responsible for ordering previous strikes on militants also ordered the December 2011 strike in Uludere that mistakenly killed 34 villagers, according to the head of a parliamentary subcommittee tasked with examining the incident.

“Military practices and orders are very certain. It’s not difficult for a prosecutor to guess [who ordered the bombing]. As the inquiry commission, we will just take a photograph. We’re not in a position to make up fantasies like ‘Ahmet was guilty, Mehmet pulled the trigger, Hüseyin shot and Ali misread the intelligence,” Justice and Development Party (AKP) Ordu deputy İhsan Şener, head of the subcommittee, told Anatolia news agency yesterday.

In the incident, 34 civilian Kurdish villagers who were smuggling oil from Iraq were killed in an air raid by Turkish jets on Dec. 28, 2011.

Subcommittee formed for investigation

A subcommittee within the Parliament’s Human Rights Inquiry Commission was formed in January 2012 to examine the incident, which requested information and documents from the General Staff, the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) and the ministries of defense, interior and justice, while also conducting visits to the region.

But despite the passage of 10 months since the incident, the subcommittee has not been able to obtain any concrete findings on which institution was the first to order the bombing.

The commission will not point to anyone as the responsible party for the order, Şener said. “The military operation in Uludere was carried out in the same way as previous operations. Those who ordered previous bombings also ordered the bombings there [in Uludere].

Naturally, it’s the judiciary’s duty to find out the responsible party.” The prosecutor who launched a probe after the incident will find the responsible party, said Şener.