Meghan Bodette
On November 26th, Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Batman MP Feleknas Uca tabled a set of parliamentary questions on the fate of detainees in Turkish-controlled Afrin, Syria.
“Since March 2018, many arbitrary arrests have been carried out against civilians by groups supported by the Turkish government and gathered under the name of the Syrian National Army (SNA),” she said.
“Reports also show that the units in question subjected civilians to torture in their headquarters. It is also known that these troops collect money and kidnap people in order to release them upon payment of ransom.”
The questions, posed to Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, included a request for statistics on the number of detainees, the number of detainees who are women, whether action has been taken against militias responsible for violations such as kidnapping, looting, and torture, and whether Turkey’s government has pursued any follow-up investigations in light of international reports on the issues.
Just days before, HDP Urfa MP Ayşe Sürücü had submitted a request for a parliamentary survey on human rights violations against women in Syria’s Afrin, Serekaniye, and Tel Abyad, noting that gender equality had deteriorated in those areas after Turkey took control.
Sürücü had previously submitted questions on the fate of Melek Nabih Xelil, a victim of an enforced disappearance and likely forced marriage in Afrin. She went missing in May of this year, and it is still not known where she is or if she is alive.
In October, HDP Adana MP Tulay Hatimogullari asked Turkey’s Minister of Agriculture a series of questions about olive oil production in Afrin, including total profits and information as to whom those profits are distributed. An American journalist has revealed that olive oil stolen from Afrin was being sold in stores across the United States through a Turkish distributor.
Governments and international organizations have repeatedly called on Turkey to answer the exact kinds of questions these lawmakers have proposed.
In September, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michele Bachelet said that Erdogan’s government must “immediately launch an impartial, transparent and independent investigation into the incidents we have verified, account for the fate of those detained and abducted by the affiliated armed groups and hold accountable those responsible for what may, in some instances, amount to crimes under international law, including war crimes.”
Yet Turkey’s approach to questions raised by elected officials through routine domestic accountability mechanisms suggests that such requests for large-scale investigations are likely futile.
The AKP government has repeatedly refused to provide basic information about potential violations of international law in Syria that MPs like Uca, Sürücü, Hatimogullari, and many of their HDP colleagues have asked for.
“We brought this issue to the agenda of the Assembly with a parliamentary question on November 26th, but we have not yet received an answer to our motion,” Uca wrote in a December 20th tweet, citing a Mesopotamia News Agency article on enforced disappearances in Afrin.
The official written questions record of the Turkish Parliament states that Hatimogullari’s questions about the olive trade were not answered within the required period either. Other inquiries about illegally traded olive products have reportedly also been ignored. In 2019, Adana MP Meral Danis Bestas raised similar concerns. She also received no answer.
One key factor in this pattern of silence is likely the fact that inquiries about rights abuses in northern Syria virtually all came from opposition lawmakers. As the only party to vote against both of the Turkish military interventions there, HDP already faces serious repression for its anti-war position. The AKP government is unlikely to listen to lawmakers it actively tries to marginalize, even when they bring up humanitarian concerns that Turkey is obligated by international law to address.
Whether a government readily provides information to any elected members of parliament who ask for it through legal processes is a clear benchmark of that government’s ability to hold itself accountable. The lack of action on inquiries related to the situation in northern Syria proposed by opposition MPs thus suggests that the “impartial, transparent, and independent” investigation the United Nations has called for is all but impossible.
The extent to which Erdogan and the AKP are blocking accountability efforts on partisan political grounds must be noted in future international evaluations of the humanitarian situation in Turkish-controlled regions of Syria. It should also be taken into account by governments who share information with Turkey about security or humanitarian concerns in these areas.
These stakeholders should understand this pattern of behavior as clear evidence that external mechanisms with binding consequences are the only way to hold Turkish officials accountable.