No sub-commission established to investigate helicopter torture

HDP and CHP MPs reacted to the AKP-MHP government's refusal to establish a commission for Servet Turgut, who was thrown from a helicopter and killed.

At the meeting of the Human Rights Investigation Commission of the Turkish Parliament, a debate was sparked about Servet Turgut, who was thrown by the Turkish soldier from a helicopter and killed in Çatak district of Van, Turkey. At the meeting, some MPs responded to the absence of a sub-commission regarding the murder.

Speaking at the meeting, HDP Muş Deputy Gülistan Kılıç Koçyiğit said, "Unfortunately, the commission has not made any call for a meeting on this issue and has also been indifferent to the call for a subcommittee to be established or to examine the incident on field.”

Sezgin Tanrıkulu, Deputy Chairman of the Parliamentary Human Rights Investigation Committee and CHP Istanbul Deputy, also stated that a sub-commission should be established to investigate the incident.

HDP Kocaeli Deputy Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu remarked that the head of the commission should go to Van and continued: "What happened in Van? You could at least go and ask. I went and talked to Servet Turgut's brother, Naif Turgut, in Van. Servet Turgut was 64 years old, a stuttering person. Soldiers came to the village while he was sewing sacks. They also took Osman Şiban in the village, got them on the helicopter, and then, three days later, these people turned out to be in a hospital with broken bones, cerebral hemorrhage, internal bleeding.  The Parliament's Human Rights Committee is still not working on this issue nor preparing a report. The government argues that  'There is no systematic torture in Turkey', but there's torture in prisons and police departments.”