The Turkish police last week performed excellent work in their operation to locate missing US tourist Sarai Sierra, whose body was found near the ancient city walls of Istanbul, causing much agony to her family but also affording them closure.
To much media hype, the search for Sierra was carried out with great care and effort, with the police going through hours of footage from city and private security cameras to trace Sierra down, following every single clue as to her whereabouts, which caused some Turkish columnists and Internet users to express feelings of resentment, in a country where thousands have disappeared at the hands of the authorities.
But not all missing person cases have a political background and last week during the search for the missing woman, one search party stood out from the crowd. The Association of Families of Missing People (YAKAD) also aided in the search efforts, putting up posters for the missing US woman and passing out flyers bearing her photograph.
The association publicly said it would look for Sierra as it would for a missing person of their own family, and did its best until the search ended tragically with the discovery of the unfortunate woman's body. But do the police, which mobilized all of their resources to find the US visitor, take the same effort when searching for others? And if not, has this caused any bitterness among people who have been looking for missing family members for years?
"This caused some resentment in society; there were comments on social media. But we don't discriminate on the basis of nationality. To whomever this happens, we do the same thing. Sarai Sierra's family suffered a lot, and as families of missing people, we felt their pain," said Zafer Özbilici, the president of YAKAD, which was established by his father when the family's second son, his brother, went missing years ago. "Sarai Sierra is a daughter of ours, too. The treatment she received, the immense effort, was absolutely right. This is how it should be for all missing people. This is how we should be looking for them."
Laws obstruct searches
Although the way the authorities generally handle cases of missing people is far from the special care shown to Sierra's case, there have been some improvements in the past few years in YAKAD's experience. Technological instruments are increasingly being employed in the search for the missing, particularly since the much-publicized incident of the three children who went missing in Kayseri in 2009.
Their tragic fate was found out only in 2011 when their bodies were discovered buried near a lake in the province after months of intense searching. Their killer, who raped one of the children before the murders, was also captured in 2011. However, even in the case of the Kayseri children, the police did not work as meticulously as they did towards the end from the start. "When a child is missing, if they are kidnapped or found by a pedophile, their rape and murder usually take place within the first hour after they go missing. A rapid response system should be set up," said Özbilici.
"The concept of a 'missing person' should be in the law," the YAKAD president said, noting that current legislation at times works against carrying out a speedy search. For example, obtaining permission from the prosecutor to track down cellphone signals can take up to a week, which might be too late in some cases. He also said that Turkey lacked a crucial resource: a region-based sex offender registry, which can be life-saving in cases of missing children. "In cases of missing children, all parties should act as they would in the case of an extraordinary situation," he said.
According to Özbilici, 9,000 children go missing in Turkey in a year. He stated that even the police can run up against obstacles due to loopholes in legislation. For example, there is no law forcing private cellphone network operators to share communications information about a missing person if it is requested on a weekend or a holiday.
He said the only recognition of missing people in law is when a family, which has given up their search after an extended period of time, can apply for a status called "gaiplik" in Turkish law, which falls slightly short of a dead in absentia certificate. For legal matters, the missing person is presumed dead but their rights are reserved in case they return, which is extremely rare.
Özbilici also noted that about 3,000 missing people are currently in the police's missing persons database, which can be viewed online, but added that the statistics are not reliable.
Pinar Bozkurt, whose sister went missing on the morning of Feb. 5 but turned up the night of Feb. 6, said as much as she was relieved to have her sister back, the police hadn't been helpful at all. "They said we had to come back in 48 hours. We had to ask a friend to crack her ask.fm and Facebook passwords to track her down," she said. Bozkurt said: "If that was the child of a police officer or a judge, would they still act with such indifference? I think not."
Özbilici said it was a common misconception that a certain period of time needs to elapse before a missing person's report can be made. Of this family, he said: "Possibly, the police officer they talked to at the station wasn't a Missing Persons Department officer. I am surprised though that this misconception still exists. We used to hear about a 24-hour gap needed for filing reports, but this isn't true either." He said 90 percent of the people reported missing usually turn up later, and the police might sometimes act dismissively based on these figures.
Mehmet Halil Güldüren has been looking for his son, Harun Güldüren, for the past 15 years. Harun went missing in 1997 in Gümbet, located near the town of Bodrum. "He went to Gümbet for work. He disappeared. We put up his photos everywhere, at every police station in Bodrum." Güldüren, who is still actively looking for his son, who should be 34 years old now, said he couldn't complain about the work the police have done and said the officers he is currently in touch with are very helpful. But when asked about if he could confidently say that the local police in Bodrum did their best to help, at least initially, he said: "We couldn't find any clues. We couldn't get any information."
YAKAD has been in contact with deputies in Parliament to push for better laws to assist in cases of missing people. They have even tried getting dairy manufacturers to print photos of missing people on milk cartons as happens in some other countries, but companies have been reluctant and public campaigns without the help of legislation forcing companies or other agencies to share information about missing people are difficult to organize. However, lawmakers seem to be reluctant to address the issue, Özbilici noted.
"The pain of looking for a missing loved one is worse than the pain of losing a loved one," Özbilici said, adding that families of missing people, for lack of closure, commonly had to deal with various psychological issues.
"What happened to Sarai Sierra could happen to anyone. The risk of having a loved one go missing is something that is present at all times," Özbilici noted as a reminder.
Sunday 10 February 2013
http://en.haberler.com/search-for-sierra-turns-spotlight-on-families-of-254386/
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