By Mark Campbell
"We had been hearing about Kurdish villages being systematically burnt by the Turkish army from the many villagers who came to the Human Rights Office in Diyarbakir. When asked if they would take us to the villages to witness, the villagers all refused, saying it would mean certain death for them. However, later in the week when we visited the IHD office to interview some Kurdish women there was a villager sitting at the desk (pictured below) when we arrived describing what had happened to his Village to the duty human rights worker. The human rights office was regularly closed down by the Turkish state and the workers arrested, so we were lucky it was functioning that morning. The human rights worker apologised that he maybe a little time as this villager was reporting his village being destroyed and he had to document his testimony. We again asked the human rights worker if he would ask the villager to consider taking us to the village to witness the crime. He said he would ask but doubted it.
Half an hour later, Mustafa (the HR worker) came into the room with the ashen-faced villager and told us that the villager was prepared to take us if it would make a difference and we could publicise it. Now it was much more real and serious so we took another half an hour to discuss the proposal in our group and came to the majority decision to go to the village to bear witness to Turkey's horrendous human rights crimes. We waited a few hours, as now we were going, journalists from the legendary Kurdish newspaper Ozgur Gundem wanted to come with us. We would say that they were our translators if we were caught. The Kurdish journalists were never able to get access to the burnt villages so it was a good opportunity now our group had decided to go. We all got into the villager's mini bus and he drove us out of Diyarbakir towards Bismil. We managed to get through many army checkpoints and eventually we were on a dirt track going over hills and valleys to avoid the army blockades. Adrenalin was running through our veins and the Kurdish villager was visibly terrified, our two Ozgur Gundem Journalists were chain smoking one cigarette after the other eyes fixed watching the road ahead for what was to come. Eventually, we came over a small hill and in front of us in the distance was a village on fire. We stopped at the neighbouring village that straddled the hill perhaps 700 metres from the burning village of Agilli (Turkish name) Birik (Kurdish name).
It was a little wet as I remember and our Minibus got stuck in some mud and shuddered to a halt. We all jumped out and went to meet with the villagers who greeted us. Many of the women from Birik had fled here after their village was burnt. They detailed how the Turkish army had arrived around 24 hours before and had rounded up all the villagers from their houses by dragging many by the hair. The Turkish soldiers had urinated on some of them and had randomly picked three people out and put them against the wall and shot them dead. The soldiers had set fire to their houses and destroyed their crops, tractors and animals. We could hear the wailing of Kurdish mourning laments coming over the small river to the village. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion and it was impossible to take everything in. Some suggested we take the minibus and drive into the village. After some struggle to get the minibus out of the mud we drove down the small hill, through the river, and up into the destroyed village. Again, like in slow motion, the mini came bumping to a halt and we tumbled out into scenes one would normally only see in films or read about in books. Smouldering ashes and some still on fire, wailing Kurdish laments mourning the dead, women sifting through the ashes of their homes trying to recover what they could into blankets. One elderly Kurdish woman when she saw us tumble out of the van screamed at us to get away while we could, "The soldiers are still here, they will kill you!" she screamed urging us to escape. But it was too late, we turned to see a line of soldiers with balaclavas covering their faces and pointing their rifles at us screaming in Turkish and running directly towards us down the hill. Again, I'm in slow motion and I'm thinking to myself that literally anything can happen in the next few seconds and I have absolutely no control over it, they could open fire, we could all die. Strange feeling, not feeling afraid, just in slow motion is the best way to describe it.
Otherworldly, like I was hovering above the scene looking down on this burning village with soldiers running towards our group pointing the rifles and aggressively screaming at us. Luckily our translator loudly and urgently explained something in Turkish that managed to eventually calm them down. They rolled up their masks and ushered us up the hill at gunpoint. We walked, in a daze through the village, smouldering, burning, flickering flames coming from the ashes and the Kurdish laments of mourning coming from the depths of the village. We eventually got to the top of the hill, still in the village, where the soldiers had lit a small campfire and had presumably been sitting around it before we entered the village. It was clear that they had been left to make sure that all the villagers left the village. Half an hour later one of the soldiers asked who was driving the minibus, I raised my hand nervously. "Come with us!" he barked aggressively. I was marched back down the hill, through the smouldering village again, to where our minibus had again got stuck in the mud. "Get in!" They had ordered other villagers from another village to bring a tractor and had connected the minibus to the tractor.
I got in and steered the minibus out of the mud and began to steer as the tractor pulled it up the hill. My camera was within reach on the passenger side and I nervously picked it up, checking where the soldiers were before snapping on autofocus pointing in the general direction of the burning houses, my heart pounding. With this camera, I had also earlier taken pictures of the two Ozgur Gundem journalists interviewing Kurdish women who had fled from the village. (All the men had been taken away in lorries). This was the thing that I was to get myself in knots over during the next 3 hours. It was pre-digital and a film camera. I had to decide what to do with this roll of film. I finished the film and took out the finished roll and replaced it with a new roll in case my camera was confiscated. Now I had the roll with the images of the village, which I stuffed down my sock, but it also had the journalists interviewing villagers. There was in the end only one right decision and that was to destroy it by exposing it to light, which I did in the mini bus on the way to the contra guerilla HQ that the Turkish army eventually took us to for interrogation. The tractor brought the minibus up to the fire where the others were being held and we were all ordered into the minibus. From here the psychological tension that had already been prevalent in the group began to massively increase. Nervous conversations broke out about what we should do and how we should act, all the while the two Ozgur Gundem journalists smoked, cigarette after cigarette constantly.
They knew, in their own minds, they were now going to die. Many of their colleagues had been extrajudicially executed that year already for far lesser 'crimes'. It's hard to now try to explain the atmosphere but again, it all seemed to be happening in slow motion. Some of us decided that the best way to get through this was to focus on trying to protect Necmiye and Nalan so we quickly reiterated to the group that the story was we had paid them both to be our translators and that was all, a financial contract. The soldiers who had been guarding us had radioed their superiors and 2 hours later a whole convoy of troops and military vehicles arrived to take us away. It was getting dark and we were many miles from any main road. They placed our minibus in between two military land rovers and told me to turn off the mini busses headlights and just follow the vehicle in front. We set off leaving the smouldering village behind and an uncertain future ahead. It was a nerve-wracking drive as the Turkish soldiers clearly were doing everything to intimidate us by driving and pushing us fast along this dirt track sandwiched in between the military convoy, without our lights while they screamed orders and insults at us. We eventually came to some sort of military base that was full of soldiers and village guards. We were made to park the minibus in a dark corner of the parking lot and marched towards to main doors of the building where a group of village guards and Turkish military in civilian clothes awaited us under a flickering light and slung insults and threats at our two translators. Unluckily Nalan was immediately recognised and identified as a 'terrorist whore' by some of the guards who knew her and she was snatched away from us before we could hold on to her. She was taken away for 'interrogation'. But we quickly spun around and made a lunge for Necmiye who we held onto tightly insisting that she stayed with us and was our translator. Luckily, she was able to stay with us. We had been taken to a Contra Guerilla HQ somewhere in Bismil and we were going to be held there for we did not know how long. It seems that we were initially officially 'disappeared' as we heard later a local journalist who came to the building to enquire about us was told by the commander of the camp that we were not there as he coldly covered up our pile of passports on the desk while looking the journalist directly in the eye. They took us and placed us all in a long room where we stayed all night not knowing what was to happen to us.
In the middle of the night, again some soldiers came into the room and asked who was driving the minibus. Again, I nervously put up my hand. "Come with us!" they barked. They took me out of the building and into the dark car park and right into the corner where we had left the minibus. Aggressively they made me open the door and sit in the driver's seat. "Turn it on!" I turned the key. Play the tape machine. It then came to me what they were doing. Frankly, I don't mind admitting, I was terrified and thought for the third time already that my life may be under threat. I flashed back to the drive from Diyarbakir to the village over the dirt tracks, the villager had a Kurdish tape playing in the music deck. They wanted me to play the Kurdish tape and perhaps interrogate me or abuse me for it. I played completely dumb and said I had no idea how to play the tape machine and tried to change the conversation as though I had no idea what they were intending. Luckily, I was marched back to the building put back in the room without any further incident in the car park.
Unknown to us, news had got back to the UK that our delegation had gone 'missing' in SE Turkey investigating alleged human rights abuses against the Kurds. We found out later that there was blanket coverage, with our situation being the first item of all the news channels and main news in the evening. 6 Oclock BBC News, 7 Channel Four News, 10 Oclock News, BBC's Newsnight at 10.30pm all ran with our plight as the first story of the days news, interviewing Lord Avebury and Mark Muller about what was happening to the Kurds in Turkey. It had apparently gone to diplomatic levels and the Turkish government were being pressurised to reveal where we were and release us. But we did not know this and were still being held in the contra guerilla HQ by the next morning. The commander of the HQ had us all brought to his office where he made a very dramatic show of lining up the cameras that had been confiscated from us the night before. His hand slowly ran along the cameras before falling on mine, a clearly professional Nikon F3 and picking it up making a big deal of trying to intimidate again. He opened up the back of the camera and roughly pulled the film from the inside. Making a show of holding the cartridge in one hand and slowly unrolling the film, exposing it to light therefore ruining the film, the message was very clear. We were told we would now be transferred to Diyarbakir Military HQ for further questioning and were corralled to the front of the building where another larger military convoy was waiting to 'escort' us. As we left the building the commander came up very close to Necmiye and whispered something to her in a very threatening manner. She turned, ashen-faced, looked me in the eye and walked towards the minibus. When we were positioned in the middle of the convoy and underway I asked her what he said. As she lit another cigarette she calmly told me that he told her that they were going to kill her and Nalan for taking us to the village.
We were driven at speed to Diyarbakir, through red lights, traffic was stopped as we were sped through the streets. We finally arrived outside the Turkish army Headquarters and the gate opened and we were ushered in. They made us park the minibus just outside the main entrance in a small car park there. Two Turkish military vehicles parked themselves on each side of the minibus so we could not get out and there we were left for possibly another 4 or 5 hours. The psychology amongst the group was now at fever pitch with arguments and stress showing itself in all sorts of ways. Again, some of us focused on Nalan and Necmiye who were clearly facing death. We didn't yet know what our fate was and didn't still know about the media coverage our situation was creating back in the UK. But we hoped that being UK passport holders that our situation was in no way comparable that facing the two Ozgur Gundem journalists.
The hours went by and eventually, wiping the condensation from the windows of the minibus we could see that there was a commotion outside with soldiers out brushing the road and officers gathering. Soon, a convoy of top military cars with flags waving on the bonnets indicating top officers came sweeping in through the gates stopping by the main doors and lots of activity as many people went into the building. About one hour later, we were summoned and taken out of the minibus and into the main reception area of the building at Turkish Military HQ in Diyarbakir. We had to reluctantly leave Nalan and Necmiye in the minibus although we constantly made demands to see them throughout the day. I was once allowed to take some cigarettes to them in the minibus but that was all. We waited in the reception area for around an hour or so being guarded by soldiers. Eventually, again some commotion with junior ranks polishing and sweeping the floor in preparation for a very high ranking important person.
Eventually, after the arrival of junior officers and more senior officers, this man arrived who was clearly God in the eyes of the junior soldiers who literally walked backwards bowing in front of him. This we found out later was the top Commander of the whole of the Emergency Area (Kurdistan) or OHAL who had come from some battle somewhere especially to 'deal with us'. He had his arm bandaged in a sling with patches of blood visible. The large salon was divided into two halves with our side filled with rows of chairs while on the other side there was a large table. The Commander of the OHAL (Emergency Region) marched to the table clearly in a spitting rage and sat himself down. He bellowed across the hall if there was anyone who spoke Turkish and if so they were to come over to him. Our amazing translator, Sandra walked calmly over to his side. She came back a few moments later and told us that he was going to come over to where we were sitting and ask us two questions, who we were and what we were doing in the region? The delegation was by this point nearly at a breaking point, psychologically. And it was not helped when the commander of the emergency region with his wound and rage stood up from the table, walked over to where we were sitting with two military video teams now filming us also and asked the person who he first came to, "What is your name and why did you come here!?" Not knowing how to respond and clearly, in a lot of stress, the first person shouted out that they 'demanded' to talk to their ambassador at which point I thought the commander of the whole emergency region with his wound and his rage was going to take out the pistol he had strapped to his side and shoot this person for such an insulting reply in his view. His whole body language certainly suggested that. He ignored the reply and walked along to the next person who was the partner of the first and also repeated the demand to 'speak to our ambassador'. There was a sharp intake of breath in the room as people waited and watched to see if he actually was going to put his gun to their head and blow their brains all over the beautifully polished marble floor. Before he did that, he tried one more time. Luckily, I was next and although I had no knowledge of Turkish culture I'd kind of sussed out that it was worth at least showing a level of respect in terms of simply answering the questions that this clearly crazed military lunatic was asking and so I was happy to inform him that 'My name is Mark Campbell and we have tradition in our country in the trade union movement of internationalism and we were simply visiting trade unionists in Turkey to find out their experiences." It was as though someone opened the windows and cool wind of fresh air came in and everyone could take a breath. He visibly 'took his hand off his gun' and continued down the line asking the same question to which the remaining members of the group replied in a similar manner.
He left, with his answers and went upstairs. Other high ranking officers arrived and joined him upstairs in an office. We were eventually summoned and taken up to the office as well. Seated with the officers standing around over us we were informed that we could finally have one call to our embassy in Ankara. So each one of us, in turn, was put through and it was then we understood that there were many people including the world's media that were enquiring to our whereabouts. I can't remember why but in that office one of the officers went to strike one of the group but stopped at the last minute. It was now dark and after the phone calls to the embassy, we were taken down the stairs and brought to a backyard type place that was in darkness apart from the light from the offices. Here, we were ominously handed over to two men in civilian clothes with long beards who were shouldering AK 47s. One look at their AK 47s and you immediately noticed the curved long bullet magazines. Not only were they very long but they were taped together so when one magazine was spent one could quickly turn around the magazine to access the next load of bullets. We were told that we were being released but I was now at my most nervous and feared for the security of our whole group. There was an electricity blackout and we had just been handed over to these two civilian men with beards and lots of bullets. Men who pretty much perfectly fitted the description of the state-sponsored assassins of Hizbullah we had been graphically told about in the preceding weeks investigating 'human right abuse allegations' against the Kurds in SE Turkey. We had also heard them at work when we stayed one night in Batman. 11 Kurds were assassinated in the streets outside our hotel that night. We were driven off in the minibus by these two armed men into the night.
As some of our group were clearly relieved to have 'been freed', I was frantically trying to work out how to grasp the AK47 of this Hizbullah assassin who was standing over us in the minibus as we drove at speed through the empty streets of a blacked-out Diyarbakir under curfew. I thought if I grabbed the gun and head-butted him I could perhaps be able to get the gun off him to use against the driver. Just as I was eyeing the gun up and down the minibus stopped and we were shouted at to get out. We tumbled out onto the street only to realise we were outside the hotel that we had based ourselves in during our trip. The minibus sped off and our Kurdish friends in the hotel ran outside frantically asking us where we had been and if we were okay. As we were assuring them we were the official uniformed Turkish army turned up in full force and announced that we were to be taken to the airport and deported straight away. We were to go to our rooms and collect our belongings and come straight down. Amongst the commotion, we started receiving phone calls from international media and journalists. As we were walking to the hotel door from the minibus, Sandra, our heroic translator, had come up close to me and said, "Mark, what about Nalan and Necmeye?" I knew what she meant and knew what we had to do. As the remaining 9 or 10 of the delegation were running down the stairs with their bags eager to be deported and away from this nightmare three of us decided that we could not go and had to stay to demand the release of Nalan and Necmiye. Not to do so would have meant certain and immediate death for them. So, we locked ourselves in our hotel room and worked the phones to international journalists informing them that we were not going to leave Diyarbakir until the two Ozgur Gundem journalists were freed. We were in for a long night with death threats and abuse hurled at us. The next morning, we arose. The rest of our delegation had 'escaped' and were in Istanbul organising flights home to the UK. One of the members of the delegation, while at Diyarbakir airport waiting to be deported and on the phone had a bullet fired into the floor inches from her feet. We found out later it had been one of the first times that Turkey's ethnic cleansing of the Kurds in the South East had been witnessed and exposed by a Western human rights delegation with full media coverage. And one of the first times that journalists from Ozgur Gundem had been able to visit one of the thousands of burnt villages and report on it from the ground. It had clearly rattled the Turkish authorities who made every effort to keep the systematic destruction of Kurdish villages covered up with a cocktail of psychological warfare and misinformation and lies.
We came down for breakfast the next morning only to find the adjacent lounge wall was lined with JITEM assassins brandishing guns and walkie talkies who were placed perfectly to watch us eat our breakfast. We began nervously eating our breakfast discussing what we were going to do today. First, we agreed we would get a taxi to the Military HQ where we were held the previous day and demand that the Ozgur Gundem journalists were released and that the army gave the minibus back to the villager who it had been impounded from. Before we finished our breakfast the human rights worker from the previous day who introduced us to the villager arrived to check we were okay and thank us for staying. He came straight up the stairs and to our table without looking around at the long line of perhaps 20 JITEM assassins lining the wall behind us. When Sandra whispered to him of their presence he could not help but look around. He turned towards us and the blood had literally drained from his face and he whispered something about there being one of the most notorious assassins present in the group, 'Yesil' and that he, Mustafa, was going to leave us and go downstairs to catch a taxi out of Diyarbakir and if we would be so kind as to at least come to the window to make sure he got into the taxi. Which we did. We then got ourselves into a taxi and made our way to the Military HQ that we had been held the day before. We had a flurry of White Renaults follow our every move. The Turkish military intelligence also came into the military base with us as we demanded the release of the journalists and the minibus. It was here that one of them approached Sandra and again some words were exchanged that I obviously did not understand but could see from Sandra's reaction was serious. She told me later, on the way back to the hotel, that they told her if she was ever to return to Turkey she would be killed. It was not long after this that we received a call at the hotel from the editor of Ozgur Gundem that our two friends had been released and we were to come to the offices of Ozgur Gundem to see them. Shaking with excitement and joy we grabbed a taxi and went straight there to an ecstatic reunion with Nalan and Necmiye. After hugs and tears, we sat down with some tea to hear what happened to them after we left the minibus almost 24 hours before. Thiers is a completely different story to ours. Not long after we were taken into the building from the minibus, they were handcuffed behind their backs and had hoods placed on their heads. They were left like that until the early hours when a lorry rumbled along and they were thrown, like rubbish into the open back. They landed on other Kurdish men, also hooded who had been detained in a village that had been razed in Mus. They were all then driven to a detention camp of some sort and pushed inside. At this point, Nalan and Necmiye both in their minds knew they were going to be killed and called out their names so someone would know where they were last known to be. They were taken inside and tortured. The Turkish police tried to get them to sign a false confession saying they were 'PKK terrorists' who took the foreign delegation to the village. They were told that the foreign delegation had been killed and was they happy now. They were then taken and told they too were going to be killed. They were ready for death. They were bond and taken blindfolded in a white Renault outside the walls of Diyarbakir. There the police put a gun to their heads as though to shoot them. You can only imagine their state of mind. Then they heard the car door of the Renault slam shut and drive off. They took off their hoods and realised they had been spared. They hitchhiked a lift back into Diyarbakir and went straight to the Ozgur Gundem offices where we met them. As we arrived at the offices they had both finished and filed their story about the Kurdish village that was destroyed by the Turkish army. Despite doing all we could to try to support them from afar, making them honorary members of the NUJ and organising delegations to trials. (One headed by Sadiq Khan) Nalan and Necmiye suffered terribly as a result of this incident. Nalan is no longer alive and Necmeye suffered the most horrific sexual torture you can imagine. We left Diyarbakir with floods of tears running down our cheeks as we climbed up into the night sky looking down on that city en route to Istanbul and then London. My time in Kurdistan changed my life forever and Kurdish women have ever since been my inspiration and held in the highest of admiration."
