39-year-old Ercan Bozkurt who lives in Bitlis province in Eastern Turkey lost his legs to mine 15 years before. He couldn’t find a way out and appealed to European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
ECHR decided that Turkey violated the European Convention of Human Rights’ article related to the case and fined Turkey 3 thousand Euro as damages for mental anguish.
Mines were planted “against PKK”
Ercan Bozkurt and his two brothers climbed on a hill near a gendarmerie station in Bitlis province to pick up weeds for their animals on November 10, 2000. Animal-drawn carriage stepped on a mine and exploded. Bozkurt was severely injured. His legs were amputated.
Gendarmerie took the statements of Bozkurt, his brothers and five forest rangers as witnesses and wrote that aforementioned mines were planted against PKK because the hill near gendarmerie station was being attacked all the time and moreover, the hill was used for monitoring and detection reasons.
Ercan Bozkurt, 24-year-old back then, said he visited that hill all the time but he didn’t know there was mine.
Bozkurt made an allegation but the case dropped due to prescription on January 2014. Ercan Bozkurt appealed to ECHR and the case was concluded yesterday.
10,000 land mine victims
According to the A Turkey Without Land Mines Initiative [Mayınsız Bir Türkiye Girişimi], there are 1,101,389 mines in Turkey with 839,000 anti-personnel land mines and 164,797 anti-tank mines. The amount of other war-leftover explosives is unknown.
Mines (approximately 3,174 spread in an area of 214,732,370 square meters) are mostly found in the following provinces: Ağrı, Ardahan, Batman, Bingöl, Bitlis, Diyarbakır, Gaziantep, Hakkari, Hatay, Iğdır, Kars, Mardin, Siirt, Şanlıurfa, Şırnak, Tunceli and Van.
There are estimably over 10,000 mine victims in Turkey. (AS/BD)
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