Esat Oktay Yıldıran

Esat Oktay Yıldıran (15 February 1949 – 22 October 1988) was a Turkish military officer who was appointed governor of the Diyarbakır Prison after the 1980 Turkish coup d'état.[1] Yıldıran became famous for his torture of PKK members in Diyarbakır Prison.[2][3]

Esat Oktay Yıldıran
Born(1949-02-15)15 February 1949
Died22 October 1988(1988-10-22) (aged 39)
Istanbul, Turkey
Allegiance Turkey
Service/branch Turkish Land Forces
RankMajor
Battles/warsTurkish invasion of Cyprus

Career

After the Turkish Invasion of Cyprus in 1974, Yıldıran was promoted to binbashi. In 1980, after the military coup which took place the same year, he was sent to the Diyarbakır Prison by Kenan Evren in person. He tortured inmates in the prison[4][5][6] and viewed the prison as a school in which inmates would be subjected to Turkification.[7] Yıldıran had a German shepherd called "Jo", which was trained to bite the genitals of naked prisoners;[6] all inmates were obligated to salute the dog.[8]

Assassination
Grave of Esat Oktay Yıldıran.

Before his death by hunger strike in 1982, Kemal Pir, a Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) member held in Diyarbakır Prison, requested in his will that Yıldıran be killed. On 22 October 1988, Yıldıran was shot dead on a public bus by a PKK militant in Ümraniye, Istanbul. According to some reports, his assassin yelled "Laz Kemal sends greetings" (referring to Kemal Pir) before shooting him. He died in front of his wife and two children.[9][10] On the 26 October he was buried.[11][12]

Aftermath

In 2013, a Turkish court sentenced the journalist Rasim Ozan Kütahyalı to a suspended prison term of ten months and fined him for writing that Yildirim was a torturer.[6]

References
  1. "Rasim Ozan - Esat Oktay Yıldıran ve PKK". takvim.com.tr (in Turkish). Retrieved 2020-11-02.
  2. Tremblay, Pinar (2020-07-08). "Complaints of torture on rise in Turkey's Kurdish southeast". Al-Monitor. Retrieved 2021-02-06.
  3. "BDP MP gives details of torture tragedy in prison - Turkey News". Hürriyet Daily News. Retrieved 2021-02-06.
  4. Olsen, William C.; Csordas, Thomas J. (2019-05-03). Engaging Evil: A Moral Anthropology. Berghahn Books. p. 282. ISBN 978-1-78920-214-4.CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  5. "Diyarbakır Cezaevi'ndeki işkencenin adı: "Beni Öp Haydar"". CNN Türk (in Turkish). Retrieved 2020-11-02.
  6. "How Turkish 'justice' works". Hürriyet Daily News. Retrieved 2021-02-06.
  7. Gambetti, Zeynep; Jongerden, Joost (2015-04-10). The Kurdish Issue in Turkey: A Spatial Perspective. Routledge. p. 71. ISBN 978-1-317-58152-9.
  8. Welat Zeydanlıoğlu: Torture and Turkification in the Diyarbakır Military Prison Archived August 29, 2009, at the Wayback Machine, undated, accessed on 21 May 2011. More information on the author can be found at http://welatzeydanlioglu.wordpress.com/ Archived 2013-08-05 at the Wayback Machine. Sites to download the report as pdf file include "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2016-03-05. Retrieved 2011-11-08.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  9. HAKAN, Ahmet. "'Co'nun kulübesinde 6 ay işkence gördüm'". www.hurriyet.com.tr (in Turkish). Retrieved 2020-11-02.
  10. erzeren, ömer (1988-10-27). "Chronik eines angekündigten Todes". Die Tageszeitung: taz (in German). p. 6. ISSN 0931-9085. Retrieved 2021-02-06.
  11. erzeren, ömer (1988-10-27). "Chronik eines angekündigten Todes". Die Tageszeitung: taz (in German). p. 6. ISSN 0931-9085. Retrieved 2021-02-06.
  12. erzeren, ömer (1988-10-27). "Chronik eines angekündigten Todes". Die Tageszeitung: taz (in German). p. 6. ISSN 0931-9085. Retrieved 2021-02-06.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.