Turkey continues to be in the grip of an ongoing
war between Kurdish rebels of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the
Turkish military. The PKK are seeking autonomy for Turkey’s estimated 12
million Kurds living in the southeast of the country. Landmines have been used
by both sides in the conflict.
Mine Ban Policy
Turkey has not signed the Mine Ban Treaty, though
a Turkish delegation was on hand for the signing ceremony in Ottawa on 2-4
December 1997. In a news report published on 4 December 1997, an unidentified
Turkish official was quoted as saying: “[W]e have to protect our borders.
Although we respect the reasons for that treaty, in order to keep our borders
secure, we have to take
measures.”[1]
According to an official at Turkey’s Permanent Mission to the United
Nations, Turkey is “very much interested in signing on” to the
treaty, but cannot do so at present due to security concerns related to
Turkey’s neighbors. Turkish officials have cited what they believe to be
the military effectiveness of
landmines[2] as well as security
concerns --the need to protect borders-- for refusing to sign the
treaty.[3] Turkey’s deputy
permanent representative at the United Nations, Tuluy Tanc, has stated that
“Ankara can fulfil the aspects envisaged by the agreement only in
stages” which he said owed to Turkey’s geographical position and its
neighbors in the southeast.[4]
On 22 March 1999, the foreign ministers of Turkey and Bulgaria signed an
agreement committing both countries not to mine their common border and to
remove the mines that are currently in the area. A joint statement by the
foreign ministers said, “According to the Agreement, the two countries
undertake not to use under any circumstances antipersonnel mines and to destroy
or remove all stocked or emplaced antipersonnel mines from the area of
application as defined in the Agreement. The Agreement also envisages a
verification regime.... [B]y signing this Agreement the two countries have
proved their determination to contribute to the ongoing efforts of the
international community aimed at the total elimination of this inhumane
weapon.”[5] Bulgaria has
signed and ratified the Mine Ban Treaty.
The Turkish UN Mission said that on Turkey’s borders with its other
neighbors, especially in mountainous regions in the country’s southeast,
“landmines do play a role.” The official stated that Turkey has
become more supportive of an international ban in recent years, noting in
particular that after abstaining from votes on UN General Assembly resolutions
supporting a ban in 1996 and 1997, Turkey voted in favor of a similar resolution
in 1998. The official said that Turkey would send a representative to the First
Meeting of the States Parties to the Mine Ban Treaty in Maputo, Mozambique in
May 1999. Without fixing a date or time period, the official said that Turkey
plans to sign the Mine Ban Treaty “as soon as possible,” but
expressed the wish that parties to the treaty expand their focus to include mine
use by rebel groups.[6]
Turkey attended the Brussels conference but did not endorse the final
declaration. Turkey also attended the negotiations in Oslo in September 1997,
but only as an observer state. Turkey was one of only ten nations which
abstained in 1996 from voting on United Nations General Assembly Resolution
51/45 S, which called for a binding international agreement to ban use,
stockpiling, production, and transfer of landmines, and was supported by 156
states. Turkey also abstained in 1997 from voting on General Assembly
Resolution 52/38 A, which called on states to sign and ratify the Mine Ban
Treaty. In 1998, Turkey signaled a new receptivity to the Mine Ban Treaty by
voting in favor of General Assembly Resolution 53/L.33 in 1998, which uses
language similar to the 1997 resolution calling on states to sign and ratify the
treaty.
Turkey is not a state party to the 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons or
its Protocol II on landmines. Turkey is a member state of the Conference on
Disarmament and favors using it as a forum for negotiating a ban on mine
transfers. In February 1999, Turkey was one of twenty-two countries to endorse
a statement advocating the negotiation of a transfer ban through the CD. The
statement, delivered by Bulgaria’s Permanent Representative at the United
Nations in Geneva, stated that a CD-sponsored transfer ban would “play an
important role in stemming the supply of APLs” and that its negotiation
would involve “the relevant States not yet party to the Ottawa Convention
or CCW.”[7]
Production, Transfer, and Stockpiling
A 1993 U.S. Department of State report listed
Turkey as a landmine producer, though not an
exporter.[8] A recent reference
work on antipersonnel mines indicates that Turkey has produced copies of two
U.S. mines: the M14 non-detectable blast mine, and the M16 bounding
fragmentation mine; both manufactured by MKEK in
Turkey.[9] Turkey also produces
three types of antitank mines: the 2kg antitank mine, the 4.5 kg antitank mine,
and the M19.[10] On 17 January
1996 Turkey declared a 3-year moratorium on landmine exports and increases in
Turkey’s landmine stockpile. This moratorium was renewed for another
three years in 1999.[11] Data
on any possible landmine exports by Turkey prior to 1996 are unavailable.
Turkey imported more than 35,000 antipersonnel landmines from the United
States between 1983 and
1992.[12] U.S. mine exports to
Turkey have included the conventional, hand-placed M-18-A1 Claymore mine and the
modern “scatterable” Area Denial Artillery Munition (ADAM) mines.
In 1988 the US sold 34,476 ADAM mines to Turkey, one of the few customers for
this “smart” mine. The ADAM is artillery-fired for remote delivery,
and arms on delivery, sending out seven tripwires which, when triggered, blow
fragments in all directions. It has a self-destruct
mechanism.[13] The interviewed
Turkish official was unaware of any current importation of mines by Turkey. It
is unknown how many landmines remain in Turkey’s stocks.
The principal non-state actor regarding landmines in Turkey is the PKK, a
rebel group which is seeking autonomy in the mainly Kurdish south east of the
country. Turkish troops hunting the rebels in the south east of the country -
as well as northern Iraq - regularly recover caches of APMs among other weapons
that have been stockpiled by the rebels. In May 1996, for example, two
antipersonnel mines were in a cache discovered by security forces in Igdir near
the border with Iran.[14]
Similarly in November 1997 three APMs of an unstated type were among a stockpile
of weapons reportedly recovered by troops in the Agri region of eastern
Turkey[15]. No independent
efforts have been made to establish the number or quantity of mines stockpiled
by the PKK.
Use
Turkey uses mines on its border regions,
particularly in the southeast region bordering Syria, Iran, and Iraq. The
Turkish mission to the UN claims that all areas mined by the Turkish military
are clearly marked with warning signs. In 1996, however, a commission of
Turkish parliamentarians reported that the military does not have charts for
many of its minefields and that in some cases PKK rebels knew these fields
better than Turkish
soldiers.[16] The PKK also uses
landmines in its campaign against the Turkish government, particularly on roads
traveled by Turkish military personnel in the southeast. The Turkish UN mission
denied reports that Turkish military forces have used landmines to deter
villagers from returning to evacuated villages which are considered sympathetic
to the PKK.
There is evidence that landmines continue to be used in Turkey. New landmine
use is almost exclusively in the southeast of Turkey where the Turkish military
continues to be embroiled in a guerrilla war with the PKK. PKK weapons caches,
regularly uncovered by Turkish security forces, often include landmines. In an
effort to halt PKK attacks on Turkey from neighboring Iraq - which has a number
of PKK bases - Turkey’s military have mined large swathes of the
Iraqi-Turkish border.[17] In
1992 the Turkish military commander of the border region, Gen. Necati Ozgen, was
quoted by Turkey’s semi-official Anatolian news agency as saying,
“There will be no point left unmined along the border this
year.”[18] Given the
large number of mines that have obviously been sown along such border areas, it
would be difficult in the extreme to determine whether casualties in such
regions are from new or old use of APM’s.
As both sides have used landmines the exact number of mines scattered
throughout Turkey’s southeast remains an unknown quantity. There are no
records for the number of mines that have been laid by the PKK and records of
the numbers laid by the Turkish military are unavailable. In addition it must be
taken into account that access to the south east of Turkey is periodically
forbidden to all independent news organizations - occasionally all foreigners -
by the Turkish government.
Determining exactly who is laying landmines and where - if they are not
detonated - in the ongoing conflict thus remains extremely difficult. Concerning
many reports of landmine deaths it remains next to impossible to ascertain
either who has died or who laid the mines. In June 1997, for example, the
semi-official Anatolian news agency reported that four PKK rebels had been
killed by mines they themselves had planted in the Hakkari province of
Turkey.[19] There was, though,
no independent confirmation as to who had died or who had laid the mines. In all
probability, given the large unknown and unmapped numbers of mines that have
been laid, it would be impossible to say whether the mines had been laid by the
PKK or the Turkish military. Turkish officials regularly admit that soldiers in
the southeast are killed by landmines, which they say have been laid by the
PKK.
The PKK are regularly accused of planting mines by the Turkish military.
Captured PKK weapons displayed to journalists often include APM’s. In
December 1997, the then deputy Prime Minister, Bulent Ecevit, said that the
government planned to lay asphalt roads in the south east of the country to
guard against PKK
landmines.[20]
While there has been no in-depth assessment of the extent of the problem in
Turkey there have been parliamentary inquiries into mines along the Turkish -
Syrian border. [21]
Turkey’s Parliamentary border security commission was quoted as reporting
that between the towns of Kilis and Cizre along the Syrian border there are
several hundred thousand
mines.[22] The commission
reported that the mined area existed along a 600 kilometer stretch of the
border and was between 400 - 600 meters deep. The report also stated that no
military maps of the minefield existed.
[23]
In a parliamentary debate on the findings the report concluded: “In the
end these mined areas are not an obstacle to terrorists or smugglers, but to the
security forces?these minefields which serve no purpose from a security point of
view should be cleared, cleansed and opened to
agriculture.”[24]
In addition large areas of Turkey’s border with Iraq have been mined by
the Turkish military. Other areas that are affected by APMs are roads, national
parks, grazing and agricultural areas - again almost exclusively in the south
east of the country. In the Kilis province of Turkey, fires lit by farmers
burning crops around the village of Arpakesmez reportedly set off a number of
APM’s, which were said to have been heated by the
fires.[25] No information was
available on either the types or number of mines that exploded.
Turkish human rights and green activists have sought to draw attention to
some of the areas affected by mines, which they say are destroying the
ecosystem.[26] In the case of
the Munzur National Park, which the activists maintained had been heavily mined,
situated in the south eastern province of Tunceli the activists were denied
access to the park by the Turkish military.
[27]
Mine Action Funding/Mine Clearance
Turkey has not contributed to the United Nations
Voluntary Trust Fund for Assistance in Mine Clearance, but has pledged $25,000
for a project to modify tanks for mine clearance in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Turkey
has also offered to provide mine clearance assistance to
Egypt.[28] In 1995, however,
Turkey barred the Mines Advisory Group (MAG) from delivering equipment to
support its mine clearance work in the heavily mined northern area of Iraq.
Turkish government officials claimed that the equipment could come into the
possession of the PKK.[29]
Ankara has given support to the idea that mines should be cleared from border
areas between Turkey and countries such as Georgia with which Ankara has good
relations.[30] No information
was found on mine awareness activities in Turkey.
Landmine Casualties
The conflict between Turkey and the PKK has lasted
fourteen years and resulted in more than 28,000 deaths. Landmine casualties in
the region are reported to be
common.[31] In July 1998 six
Kurdish militiamen fighting against the PKK for the Turkish government were
killed by a landmine.[32]
In 1997, allegations surfaced that the Turkish military had forced Kurdish
villagers to act as human mine
detectors.[33] In March 1997 a
Turkish parliamentary commission investigated allegations by villagers in the
Batman region that troops had forced them to walk through a
minefield.[34] According to
Hadji Mohamed, a local farmer,
“The security forces came to the village and rounded up 30 of our men
and forced us into their cars. They said we were being taken to collect wood.
Instead they drove us to a huge field they dais was full of
mines.”[35]
Another man, who refused to give his name said:
“The lieutenant who was leading the operation ordered us to stand in a
line and start walking towards the field. We were terrified. When we refused, he
began cursing us, slapping us and beating us with his rifle butt. He (the
lieutenant) said, ‘From now on you will be mine detectors and I will make
you walk through this field every day for the rest of your
life.’”[36]
The villagers said they spent hours wandering around the field. Local
security forces denied the allegations.
[5] Joint Statement of the
Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Repubic of Turkey, H.E. Ismail Cem and the
Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Bulgaria, H.E. Ms. Nadezhda
Mihhailova, Sofia, 22 March 1999, on the “Agreement between the Republic
of Turkey and the Republic of Bulgaria on non-use of Anti-Personnel Mines and
their Removal from or Destruction in the Areas Adjacent to their Common
Borders.”
[6] Landmine Monitor
interview with official at Permanent Mission of Turkey to the United Nations, 26
March 1999.
[7] Statement by Ambassador
Petko Draganov, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Bulgaria to the
United Nations Office and the other International Organisations in Geneva,
(undated) February 1999.
[8] U.S. Department of State,
Outgoing Telegram, Unclassified, Subject: Landmine Export Moratorium Demarche, 7
December 1993.
[9] Eddie Banks,
Antipersonnel Mines: Recognizing and Disarming (London: Brassey’s
1997), pp. 212-213.
[10] U.S. Department of
Defense, “Mine Facts” CD ROM.
[11] Landmine Monitor
interview with official at Permanent Mission of Turkey to the United Nations, 26
March 1999.
[12] U.S. Defense Security
Assistance Agency, U.S. Landmine Sales by Country, March 1994.
[13] Human Rights Watch Arms
Project, Weapons Transfers and Violations of the Laws of War in Turkey
(Washington, D.C.: Human Rights Watch, 1995) p. 34
[14] “Syrian Reportedly
Among Terrorists Captured In Central Turkey”, TRT TV (via BBC
monitoring), 31 May 1996.
[15] “Kurdish Rebel
Organizer Surrenders To Security Forces In East”, TRT TV (via BBC
monitoring), 28 November 1997.
[16] "Turkey Hindered by own
Landmines on Syrian Border,” Reuters News Service, 6 December
1996.
[17] “Turkey Puts
Minefields Along Iraq Border,” Reuters News Service, 8 April
1992.
[19] “Turkey Says Rebel
Kurds Killed By Own Mines,” Reuters news service (Quoting Anatolian
agency), 17 June 1997.
[20] “Government to
Asphalt Roads,” Yeni Yuzil newspaper, 23 December 1997.
[21] “Turkey Hindered
by Own Landmines On Syrian Border”, Reuters news service, 6 December 1996;
“Border Security Report,” Sabah newspaper, 11 March
1997.
[23] “Border Security
Report”, Sabah newspaper, 11 March 1997; “Turkey Hindered By Own
Landmines On Syrian Border,” Reuters news service, 6 December
1996.
[31] Country Profiles, United
Nations Demining Database, http:www.un.org.Depts/Landmine/ (Ref.
3/26/99).
[32] "Six Kurd Militiamen Die
in Turkey Mine Blast,” Reuters News Service, 6 July 1999.
[33] "Turk Parliament to
Probe Human Mine Detector Claim,” Reuters News Service, 20 February
1997.
[34] Amberin Zaman,
“Turks Used Kurds As Mine Detectors”, The Daily Telegraph, 6
March 1997; “Parliamentary Committee Investigates Disturbing
Allegations,” Sabah newspaper, 12 February 1998.
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