The Administrative Court in the Kurdish province of Siirt has definitively annulled the development plan for the Newala Qesaba area. With this decision, the ruling declared unlawful the decision of the state-appointed trustee administration of the city to open the site for construction despite the presence of mass graves there. The court thereby cancelled a development plan whose implementation had already been provisionally suspended last year.
The lawsuit had been filed by the Chamber of City Planners in Amed (Diyarbakır), which challenged the plan due to violations of regulations governing the preparation of spatial development plans.
In its ruling, the court identified several serious deficiencies. Among other things, it said, the required standards regarding population density and the proportion of green spaces had not been observed. In addition, a geotechnical–geological survey report approved by the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change—required as a precondition for construction—was missing.
Furthermore, high-voltage power lines run across areas that were designated in the plan as green spaces and commercial zones. According to the court, construction under such conditions contradicts fundamental principles of urban planning. The reasoning of the verdict states that the planned building areas beneath the high-voltage lines would disrupt the overall planning structure and thus violate basic principles of urban planning as well as planning rules and techniques. The identified deficiencies, it said, did not concern only individual aspects but affected the entire development plan. The court therefore concluded that the decision violated existing law and the relevant planning regulations and must be completely annulled.
Newala Qesaba – the “Butcher’s Creek”
Newala Qesaba (“Butcher’s Creek”) is located near the city center of Siirt and covers an area of approximately 45 hectares. The site is considered a historical memorial area, as victims of genocides, pogroms and extrajudicial executions from various phases of the 20th century were buried there. At Newala Qesaba lie both victims of the 1915 genocide against Armenians and members of the Kurdish guerrilla forces, as well as civilian victims of the Turkish state’s dirty war in Kurdistan.
For this reason, the decision by the trustee administration appointed by the Turkish government to open the area for development had sparked strong criticism from human rights organizations, civil society initiatives and professional associations. Critics warned that construction could destroy possible evidence of serious human rights crimes and permanently prevent clarification of the past.
Calls for investigation
Human remains were first discovered during an excavation at Newala Qesaba in 1989. However, the work was halted on the same day by order of the provincial administration, and no official investigations have been conducted since. Human rights organizations such as the IHD and relatives of the disappeared have for years been demanding a comprehensive forensic investigation as well as the identification of the victims.
The system of so-called trustee administrations has also been under criticism for years. The Turkish government appoints state trustees in many Kurdish-majority cities when elected mayors are removed from office or imprisoned—often at the initiative of Ankara. These appointed administrators then assume the municipal powers of the elected local governments. Opposition parties and human rights organizations view this as a restriction of democratic self-governance and criticize that key decisions about cities and municipalities are made without democratic legitimacy.
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