“We know that Huda Par is a murderous organization, and that they’ve gone legal because the conditions required it,” Konca Kuris’s brother Mehmet Genc has said.
The brother of Konca Kuris – a feminist Islamist writer who was abducted by Hezbullah group in Turkey in 1998 and killed after being interrogated under torture for 38 days – denounced the recently formed alliance between the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Kurdish Islamist Huda Par (Free Cause Party) who has its roots in the Hezbollah group.
The Hezbollah (not related to the Lebanese Shia organization by the same name) was active during the 1990s, operating as part of state forces’ operations to crush the Kurdish opposition, and is held responsible for the deaths of over 500 people, most of them Kurdish political activists, human rights defenders and journalists. A year after Hezbollah leader Husetin Velioglu was killed in 2000 in a clash with the police in Istanbul, police chief Gaffar Okkan was assassinated by the group on 24 January 2001.
The remains of Konca Kuris was found buried in a “grave house” 555 days after she was abducted.
Asked by journalist Ismail Saymaz to comment on the AKP-Huda Par alliance, Kuris’s brother Mehmet Genc said:
“It made our blood boil. Our family know what Huda Par is. Edip Gumus, Cemal Tutar and Huseyin Velioglu, they were the ones in charge. Velioglu was captured dead, Gumus and Tutar were incarcerated. The two were released in 2011. They fled right in front of everyone’s eyes. Then that one (Gumus) founded Huda Par. We know that Huda Par is a murderous organization. They’ve gone legal because the conditions required it.”
Asked to comment on the remarks by Devlet Bahceli, the leader of far right Nationalist Movement Party, who recently claimed that Huda Par does not have links to the Hezbollah, Genc said: “It wouldn’t even trick kids (…) Such a shame. Nobody should mock our intelligence.”
He continued:
“Let me tell you something. It was the year 1998. We identified Konca Kuris when she was found in Konya (…) We had some dental measurements sent from Mersin, and they matched. This had to be done because her face was no more identifiable (…) A police chief said in the process that they had the extracted remains of three or four more persons. This part, it is important. My sister had believed in something. She used to say, ‘I’m an Islamist feminist…’ But do you know whose remains those others were? Now, it’s about a group of kids who were playing football in the city of Van. Hezbollah members warn them. ‘Don’t play football, it won’t turn out good for you,’ they say. They are just kids, all 13 or 14 years old. Some of them were abducted and executed in Konya, and buried there. All because they were playing football. Hey brother, where is the conscience of the people? You defend the rights of the kid who was killed in Palestine. What about the Kurdish kids here?”
In another recent interview, former interior minister Sadettin Tantan confirmed the links between Hezbollah and Huda Par.
Tantan, who served as minister between May 1999 and June 2001 (the period during which Hezbollah leader was killed in a police operation and police chief Gaffar Okkan was assassinated), told journalist Aytunc Erkin:
“Hezbollah leaders Edip Gumus and Cemal Tutar, who were released in 2011 and fled the country, are currently working on social media to provide support for Huda Par. This is no secret.”
He added: “We are going through a phase today in which a pack of murderers have turned themselves into a political party.”
Gercek News