These are the words of a father whose son, a member of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), was killed in the Çukurca district of Hakkari province, close to the borders of Iran and Iraq. I met him three months ago at the Human Rights Association in Diyarbakır. He is not alone.

More than 50 families have applied to the Human Rights Association. They all have loved ones whose bodies remain unburied. Raci Bilici, head of the Human Rights Association in Diyarbakır said, “the numbers are much higher, but unfortunately many families are afraid to apply to us and it is impossible for us to go to those rural areas and search for the bodies.”

After our meeting, I wrote a letter to the President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım. I included all of the details of the family, pictures of the disintegrated body, the names of the social media accounts that shared these kinds of pictures (these accounts were taken down after I sent my letter). I demanded help for this family and others. I also gave the name of the commander in my letter and gave information about the other families whose loved ones’ bodies were unburied and eaten by animals. I asked them to stop these inhumane and barbaric actions. I also sent my letter and other documents to their advisors. No one responded. No one!

This is not the only case. Last August, Aycan İrmez, a member of parliament for the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), asked parliament about the body of a woman PKK member that was left near the village of Güneyçam in Şırnak province. Soldiers and village guards militia would not allow villagers to bury the body. It was left on the ground and eaten by animals. The villagers wanted to bury the body so their children would not see it while walking to school every day.

The dead bodies of PKK members brought to hospitals are another problem. There are just a few imams in the region who can wash and perform the religious ceremonies for these bodies. I have interviewed these imams and written about the situation a number of times. One imam told me that at the beginning he was sick when he saw these bodies. No head, the eyes were removed, ears and genitals cut off and there was evidence of torture. “But then” he said, “I understood what humans are capable of doing to each other.”

Not only the dead bodies, but the bodies of those put to rest in PKK cemeteries have been affected by this brutality. In the last two years, PKK cemeteries have been bombed or destroyed. Sometimes Turkish authorities open the graves of the PKK members and remove the corpses. Just three months ago, 267 corpses were exhumed and removed from the Garzan Cemetery in Bitlis. The families applied to the Human Rights Association and the Human Rights Association prepared a detailed report about the Garzan cemetery.[1]

Lezgin Bingöl, a father of one of the PKK member whose corpse was exhumed, told Kurdish news agency ANF: