In line with the dirty war policies by the AKP/Palace regime based on animosity against Kurds, gun licenses are being issued to temporary village guards. People who are official or unofficial village guards in Kurdistan will be free to carry firearms outside the limits defined by the law.  With the open carry licenses made possible by the AKP/Palace’s practices that made it easier for AKP members to get firearms licenses, village guards and AKP members can comfortably strut around in public with guns in their belts. There are reports indicating an increase in the applications for gun licenses by the village guards and AKP members in Urfa and Adıyaman.

AKP MEMBERS AND VILLAGE GUARDS SECRETLY ARMED

The AKP regime that allows their supporters and agents to carry firearms in public is arming their partisans secretly. Following calls issued on social media in the previous months, the AKP regime has started offering perks for carrying guns in public to their partisans and agents. The stories were in the media under “AK Silahlanma (AK Armament)”, and afterwards applications from AKP member village guards increased in no time. There are reports that the AKP members who take gun licenses are being secretly armed.

OVER 100 THOUSAND VILLAGE GUARDS IN KURDISTAN

The precursor to this was the AKP regime employing officially 5 thousand new village guards, but the number rises to 7 to 10 thousand when the unofficial assignments are accounted for. According to official figures, there are 53 thousand official village guards, and some 40 thousand people called temporary and volunteer village guards - over 100 thousand village guards will personally take part in the dirty war concept of the AKP regime. The people in the village guard system enacted in 1985 against the Kurdish Freedom Movement are under the district governorates in the administrative sense and in the professional sense they are under order s from the Gendarmerie Squadron Command.

THEY WILL INTIMIDATE THE PEOPLE OVER THE ARMED AKP MEMBERS AND VILLAGE GUARDS

With the licensing that allows the village guards coordinated by the civilian authority and the gendarmerie, along with the AKP members to be armed, the threat against civilian population called the AKP regime aims to intimidate the dissidents through policies of tyranny and oppression. According to İHD’s (İnsan Hakları Derneği - Human Rights Association) report on the village guard system, 183 people have been killed by the village guards and 259 people were wounded since 1990. The defendant in the case for the massacre in Mardin’s Mazıdağ district’s Bilge village on May 2009 where 44 people including 7 children were murdered, Mehmet Çelebi’s statements that he had worked as a village guard for 17 years and had witnessed two murders in that time were included in the court files. It is also known that the village guard identity is used for arms and drug smuggling in Kurdistan.