While Universal Children’s Day, 20 November, is once again marked by a tragic tableau, the hundreds of children whose futures were taken from them await justice.

Turkey is a country that only recognises the Declaration of the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Rights of the Child on paper. The last quarter of a century in Turkey has witnessed state terror with Uğur Kaymaz, Ceylan Önkol and Berkin Elvan being only three of hundreds of children who have been killed by the weapons of the state.

A country where the culprits are unknown and justice consists of a sign

While Turkey boasts it is the only country which has a children’s day, the treatment it sees fit for children is the other side of the coin. In other words, there are hundreds of unsolved murders of children. There is talk of truth and reconciliation but the reality is that justice consists of a sign swinging in the wind in a country where child murderers have impunity.

According to IHD statistics, 570 children have died in the last 25 years as the result of police or military gunfire or bombing, and due to unexploded ordinance and mines relating to the Kurdish question. 200 of these children have died in the last 12 years, during the AKP period, and been labelled “terrorist”, “militant” or “smuggler”. As if that was not enough they are said to have “been used”.

The Roboskî massacre of nearly three years ago when 34 Kurds, 19 of them children, were massacred, is one case where justice is still being sought.

What kind of fraternity, what kind of confrontation, what kind of embracing is this?

The most noticeable fact regarding these deaths is that despite the reality that a lot of the child deaths resulted from the conflict in Kurdistan, around 200 children have died while the AKP government has been in power. The AKP’s policies of protecting murderers contrast with its claim to be seeking a solution to the Kurdish question.

Children awaiting justice...

The numbers of children killed in each year during the last quarter century are as follows: in 1989, 2, in 1990, 21, in 1991, 12, in 1992, 116, in 1993, 66, in 1994, 86, in 1995, 7, in 1996, 6, in 1997, 7, in 1998, 2, in 1999, 12, in 2000, 3, in 2004, 1, in 2006, 8, in 2008, 1, in 2009, 3, in 2010, 6, in 2011, 28, in 2012, 10, in 2013, 3 and in 2014, 1.