Former Turkish Soldier Moves to Roboski Village, Pledging to

[Aslan]

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Trained for war as a Turkish soldier, Ibrahim Yaylali has put that life behind. He was so moved by the Turkish airstrike that killed 34 Kurds in the border village of Roboski more than a year ago that he has pledged to dedicate his life for peace in the area.

“I decided to move to Roboski village to clean my conscience of the crime that was perpetrated against the people of this area,” Yaylali told Rudaw.

“I have seen a lot of crimes against the people of this area,” said Yaylali, whose decision followed the December 28, 2011 airstrike that killed 34 villagers, 17 of them children. “This area needs peace,” the 38-year-old said.

The bombing has been roundly condemned both in Turkey and abroad, with rights groups demanding to know who ordered the attack and accusations that the findings of an investigation are being withheld and that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had sent in the fighter planes that killed villagers smuggling goods across the border with Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Region.

Like thousands of other Turkish soldiers, in a country with compulsory military service, as a young conscript Yaylali was posted in southeast Turkey to fight the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which for decades has conducted an armed struggle against the state for autonomy and greater rights for Turkey’s large Kurdish population.

He was moved to the Botan area in 1994, where he was captured by PKK guerrillas and held captive for two-and-a-half years. Trained to fight and kill the rebels, finding himself in their midst was a frightening moment for Yaylali.

“I had been told that the rebels were ignorant and hired agents, but I found them using sophisticated language when they talked,” Yaylali recalled. They told him they would treat him according to international law, but he still believed he would be killed. Only later, when he was transferred to a guerrilla base on the border with Iraqi Kurdistan, Yaylali was reassured he would not die.

He ended up living with the rebels, spending his time reading and often holding long discussions with senior PKK leaders, an experience that changed his life. It was also then that he discovered that his family roots were not Turkish.

“After I was caught by the PKK I found out that my ancestors were Romans, not Turks,” he said.

After he was freed by the rebels, Yaylali was charged with conducting propaganda for the PKK and sentenced by a Turkish military court to three-and-a-half years in prison, where he says he was tortured and abused.

Now, Yaylali has moved to Roboski, where he intends to live the rest of his life.