Amed (Diyarbakır)- Sozdar Özdemir was only one and a half years old when her father, Mehmet Özdemir, disappeared on December 26, 1997 when he was in custody. For five years, she has been participating in the “Let the Disappeared Be Found, Let the Perpetrators Be Tried” protest held by the Human Rights Association (IHD) Amed Branch every week by holding her father’s photograph.

When her father disappeared, her mother was three months pregnant. Sozdar Özdemir grew up hearing the stories of how her father was detained and tortured, like other children of the disappeared. When her father was detained, he was threatened to death, “your family will find even your bones.”

“Since then, we have received no news from him. We have not even found his bones. When my mother first asked where my father was, she was told that they (police) had his dead body. But then, they denied. My mother struggled for years to find my father. I do not remember my father. Sometimes, I try to remember him or his voice but I remember nothing.  Now there is only one thing I know and must remember; I must keep struggling to find him.”

 ‘I grew up without my father’

All Sozdar Özdemir wants is to have her father’s grave so that she can visit his grave. “I will always struggle. I will struggle to find my father as long as I live.” Her mother participated in the “Let the Disappeared Be Found, Let the Perpetrators Be Tried” protest for years and Sozdar Özdemir has participated in the protest for five years. “I call on all families of the disappeared to struggle for their loved ones. I grew up without my father, looking at his photographs. I stand firm for my father. I hold my father’s photograph every week.”

‘We stand by the families of the disappeared’

NuJINHA spoke to Suzan Mehmetoğlu, deputy chair of the IHD Amed Branch, about the protest. “The struggle for the disappeared has been going on for more than 30 years,” Suzan Mehmetoğlu told NuJINHA. “There are many stories in this region, such as the stories of children who lost their fathers before they were born.

“These families ask for clarification about their missing relatives ; however, the state never gives any information. The state has no intention of giving any information because it knows that if it gives information, it will be tried. Despite everything, we will keep struggling and standing by the families of the disappeared. The disappeared must be found, the perpetrators must be tried.”

Mehmet Özdemir has been missing for 27 years

Mehmet Özdemir was born in 1954, in the Araki (Kıyı) village of Lice, a district of Amed (Diyarbakır). He was married and a father of seven. In the 1990s, Turkish police and gendarmerie often raided his village. Due to the raids, Mehmer Özdemir had to leave his village with his family and began to live in Amed city center. He sometimes went to his village to harvest the crops. After the village was burned, he started earning a living from animal husbandry in Amed.

On December 26, 1997, he left his home to go to the livestock market in the city. After visiting one of his friends, he went to a teahouse near the livestock market. While having tea with his friend, he was kidnapped by two armed persons having a police radio. After receiving no information about his husband, Enzile Özdemir demanded legal support from the Human Rights Association to find her husband, Mehmet Özdemir.

With the help of lawyers, she applied to the Diyarbakır Public Prosecutor's Office to learn if her husband was in police custody. On September 7, 1999, she applied to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) after the exhaustion of domestic remedies. On January 8, 2008, the ECtHR found Turkey to have violated the European Convention on Human Rights due to the failure of the Turkish authorities to conduct effective investigations into the fate of Mehmer Özdemir and ruled that Turkey was to pay to his family. Despite all the efforts, no news has been received from Mehmet Özdemir since 1997.