Tucked into the back corner of a construction site for a new dog shelter in eastern Istanbul lies a freshly dug, unmarked grave – the first in the new “Traitors’ Cemetery,” created specifically to hold the bodies of coup plotters who died in the July 15 failed coup attempt.

In the week following the attempted coup in Turkey, which left about 290 people dead, the Istanbul municipality announced it intended to set up a cemetery specifically for those people who officials branded as traitors undeserving of a proper burial. About 24 coup plotters are believed to have been killed that night.

Authorities would “reserve a spot and call it a Traitors’ Cemetery. Passersby will curse them,” Istanbul Mayor Kadir Topbaş said in remarks carried by the Doğan News Agency. “May every passerby curse them and let them not rest in their tombs.”

The creation of the cemetery comes amid a widespread crackdown in the aftermath of the coup. Nearly 16,000 people have been detained, including about 10,000 military personnel, while displays of patriotism abound, with many Turks flying national flags from the windows of their apartments or cars and nightly pro-government rallies in cities across the country.

Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) issued a directive denying funeral prayers and services for those who died while trying to overthrow the government. Such prayers, it said, were intended for the faithful as an act of exoneration, “but these people, with the action they undertook, have disregarded not just individuals but also the law of an entire nation and therefore do not deserve exoneration from the faithful.”

Meanwhile, some campaigners and some theologians say a proper burial was a human right, whatever the deceased had done.

“This is a decision made hastily at the heat of the moment,” said Necip Taylan, a former lawmaker from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and retired professor from faculty of theology at Marmara University.

“We know the society is hurt by what happened,” he was quoted as saying by the Agence France-Presse.
“But there have always been traitors. It is nothing new, you can bury [the coup plotters] in a separate spot… I don’t think it is a good idea to create such a cemetery.”

Andrew Gardner, Turkey researcher for Amnesty International, said such moves were “contributing to what is a pretty poisonous atmosphere and a dangerous atmosphere” in the aftermath of the failed coup.

https://youtu.be/t4iGBIVw96k

“Denying people religious services and decent burial is a basic denial of people’s rights. In any normal circumstances such statements would be unimaginable,” Gardner said.

Construction was quick. In two days, workers had built a low stone wall around a patch of land in the back of the site that will hold a new shelter for some of Istanbul’s many stray dogs. A black metal sign was put up July 25, with the words “Traitors’ Cemetery” in white.

The first – and so far, only – body arrived in an ambulance on July 25, the workers at the site said. No prayers were said and no ceremony was held for the burial beneath a dying pine tree.

The workers weren’t sure who was laid beneath the rough mound of earth, stones and broken pine branches, but local media said the first to be interred there was Mehmet Karabekir, a 34-year-old captain and father of two. His mother, they reported, refused to claim his body, so he was taken to the new cemetery.

Next to his lay three more graves – deep, open trenches dug out of the rocky ground with heavy machinery, waiting for new arrivals. The workers haven’t been told when more bodies might come.

All they know, workers said July 27, is that they were told to build a dry stone wall in a corner of the construction site, and dig some graves.

Source: http://www.tert.am/en/news/2016/07/29/Turkey-Traitors-Cemetery/2092674