The bodies of HPG guerrillas Özgür Ay and İslam Ölçay, who were martyred in an airstrike on December 27 in the region of Mount Bagok in the countryside of Mardin’s Nusaybin district, were taken by their families and buried in recent days after DNA tests showed a match.

The body of Lokman Muhammed from North-East Syria, who was martyred in the same bombardment, had been kept in the morgue since. Lokman Muhammed's family was not able to come to Turkey and take the body, which was buried in the “nameless” section of Kamor City Cemetery in the central district of Artuklu in Mardin.

According to reports, the bodies of the three guerrillas were severely desecrated and unidentifiable, burnt and some parts missing. So, the families gave blood samples for identification.

The Turkish state has been conducting a sort of necro-policy against Kurdish society since the 1990s by exploiting the bodies of the martyrs. Bodies are mutilated, dismembered or publicly displayed. After the Turkish government abandoned the peace process in 2015, a new era began. Massive police operations have turned funerals of fighters, which were attended by thousands and often even hundreds of thousands before 2015, into small events surrounded by police in which a maximum of ten family members can take part.

At the same time, the bodies of the fallen guerrillas are often only delivered after a long period of time. The remains are often buried in cemeteries of the nameless and have to be exhumed, which represents further harassment for the families. However, the state goes even further by sending packages containing the bones of the fallen Kurdish fighters to their relatives or simply burying the remains in undignified places. This approach aims to break society's spirit of resistance.