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| 2 Eyewitnesses of 'Sack Crisis' Seek US Asylum By Foreign News Desk Published: Monday, December 19, 2005 zaman.com Two Turkish translators have been granted the right of political asylum by the Washington administration, officials say. The translators were working for the Americans when United States troops detained Turkish soldiers in Northern Iraq and forced them to wear hoods on their heads. Tuncay Celik and Savas Dalkilic, who for the first time spoke with Associated Press about the “sack crisis,” which broke out when 11 Turkish soldiers were arrested by US soldiers during a raid on the Turkish Special Operations Section in Suleymaniye on 4 July 2003, said they are reluctant to return to Turkey having witnessed the events that took place during the raid. Celik and Dalkilic, currently living in California, said they will be proclaimed as “traitors,” and may be subjected to torture or even be killed if they return to Turkey, and persuaded the American government to grant them the right of asylum. Celik told that the Turkish captain’s telephone rang during the raid, and described the scene as follows: “It was Vecdi Gonul, the Minister of Defense, on the other end of the line. He was speaking so loudly that even we could even hear him. ‘Solve this problem immediately. Find out perpetrators,’ Gonul shouted at the captain.” “Do not allow yourselves to be interrogated, or you will be punished when you return to Turkey,” a Turkish soldier told the translators. Another soldier spoke to the translators about a document forwarded to Ankara that depicting the two translators as “traitors”. |