Village Guard System
Auteurs : 1.Nesrin Uçarlar, 2. Osman Aytar, 3. Șemsa Özar
Diyarbakır
Published: DİSA
2013
The report you are holding contains an analysis, in a historical and social context, of the village guard system, which is one of the tools of the state in Turkey for polarizing the society as pro-statist and enemy of the state as a result of arming civilian citizens. This research sheds light on the background of the continuity between the Hamidiye Cavalry Regiments, the Late Ottoman paramilitary organization, and the modern village guard system that has been in practice since 1985.
For approximately 30 years, the common denominator of various political powers was to consider the village guard system as an infection that needs to be eradicated, and also viewed it as an armed force that should persist after these political groups came to power. We follow the traces of the motive behind this dual attitude in the part of our research where meeting minutes of the Assembly and the news of the press organs were examined.
In this research you will see that the village guard system is not only a tool of power, an instrument to polarize the Kurdish society or a world of armed crime, but also a social problem and an experience of human devastation. This field research was conducted on such a large scale for the first time and was based on the interviews done with the village guards, their spouses and children in their own villages. The research demonstrates the vast existence of different point of views regarding the village guard system, the state, PKK, Kurdish identity and their roles in this system among villagers who became the village guards willingly, by force or due to reasons beyond their control.
The research does not consider the village guard system as an institution that can be reformed or dissolved, but rather as an instrument that needs to be finalized by the mechanisms of seeking justice and social security while passing through a process without weapons and clashes. For this reason, a chapter regarding by which legal, political and social precautions the paramilitary organizations in other countries were abolished was also included in the report.[1]