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School named after officer accused of torturing Kurds during 1980s military rule draws ire

Turkish Minute

The revelation that a primary school in the western province of İzmir was named after Esat Oktay Yıldıran, a military officer who was accused of torturing Kurdish political prisoners following a 1980 military coup in Turkey, has sparked a strong backlash across the country.

Yıldıran was a military officer who was appointed warden of the notorious Military Prison No. 5 in Diyarbakır after the September 12, 1980 military coup. He was infamous for his brutal treatment of Kurdish political prisoners at the prison. Promoted to major after participating in the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, he was later named head of the Diyarbakır prison by coup leader and then-president Kenan Evren. His tenure was marked by extreme torture likened by many to Nazi practices, aiming to enforce Turkification among inmates. Prisoners faced inhumane treatment, including being forced to eat excrement and endure electric shock torture.

Yıldıran was assassinated on a bus in Ümraniye, İstanbul, in 1988. The assailants, allegedly members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), were never apprehended. The government declared him a martyr, and he was posthumously honored by Turkish nationalists. However, his name remains controversial, with his torture the subject of television series and books, such as Mehdi Zana’s “Hell No. 5. Diary from a Turkish Prison.”

Many inmates in the Diyarbakır prison died either by suicide or as a result of hunger strikes staged to escape torture.

The decision to name an elementary school in Buca after Yıldıran has been criticized by politicians, lawyers, journalists and human rights activists.

The Diyarbakır Bar Association emphasized in a statement titled “Do not legitimize the torture and the torturers!” that naming a school after a person who was a perpetrator of crimes against humanity is considered “a “loss of society’s memory,” calling for an immediate correction of the “mistake.”

“What is the Kurdish issue? The Kurdish issue is the naming of a school after a notorious torturer in the Diyarbakır military prison. That’s exactly what it is!” Salih Gergerlioğlu, the son of pro-Kurdish Equality and Democracy Party (DEM) lawmaker and prominent human rights activist Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

The Kurdish issue, a term prevalent in Turkey’s public discourse, refers to the demand for equal rights by the country’s Kurdish population and their struggle for recognition.

Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu stated, addressing the Interior Ministry, that the decision to name the school after Yıldıran was a “scandal” and a “crime.”

“Do you want students to become like him?” he said.

Sezgin Tanrıkulu, a Kurdish lawmaker from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), said this decision once again showed the people the true face of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Historian and journalist Ayşe Hür said Yıldıran’s torture methods included sexually abusing women, forcing them to walk around naked, raping them, forcing men to walk with a rope attached to their genitals, feeding them feces and inserting a baton into their rectum.

“Living in a time where they have moved beyond impunity to rewarding torturers, the shame of being unable to escape the paralysis of memory loss is a disgrace we all share!” Şebnem Korur Fincancı, president of the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) and prominent human rights activist, said on X.

In response to the reactions, the Education Ministry released a statement emphasizing that the decision was seen as “an unacceptable mistake” by the ministry.

“Regardless of when it was made, endorsing this decision, which implies bringing the mistakes of a time with deep imprints in our memories to the present, is not possible. We want it to be known that we will continue to make efforts to establish a fair memory and to heal the wounds resulting from the pains of the past,” they added.

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