Skeletons in the Turkish closet: remembering the Armenian genocide

Official URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780429023163-20

It was a few weeks after the New Year in 2012 when the skeletons of 38 human beings were discovered during an excavation in a restoration site in the Içkale neighborhood of Diyarbakir. The site where the remains were unearthed is the yard of the Saraykapi prison in Ickale, which was built in the 1880s during the reign of Sultan Abdulhamit II. Saraykapi prison in Ickale was the site of horrifying forms of torture and murder of human beings in at least three different historical instances: Firstly, it was known as a place where members of the Armenian community of Diyarbakir were detained, tortured, and killed in the spring of 1915. Secondly, it was used as the office of the public prosecutor as well as a detention area for holding arrested suspects after the 1980 military coup d’etat. Thirdly, the prison was used as the center for JITEM, a clandestine anti-terror organization formed within the deep state in the 1990s.