Heavy equipment sent by the Diyarbakir Public Prosecutors Office began digging early on Monday in search of the alleged bodies. Silopi Public Prosecutor Nazir Kuz, Silopi Bar Association head Nusirevan Elci and lawyers Kamil Ozdemir and Nazan Birlik accompanied the equipment. Security measures were in place as four backhoes were used to dig up the land. 
 

Yildirim Begler, long a translator for the military, recently shared spine-chilling claims about illegal groups in the military and their activities in the ‘90s, including an allegation that some of the top commanders in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) were captured in northern Iraq by a Special Forces team in 1996 but released under orders from generals. Begler, a Kirkuk Turkmen who came to Turkey in 1995, worked as a General Staff translator for 14 years. He now lives in Norway, near Oslo, where he has political refugee status. In his latest revelations to Zaman daily, Begler called on prosecutors conducting the investigation into Ergenekon, a clandestine gang charged with plotting to overthrow the government, to act, describing the precise location of some of the bodies disposed of in illegal operations by the Special Forces Command.
 

Following Begler’s revelations, the families of two businessmen, Mehmet Bilgic and Halil Birlik, asked the prosecutor’s office to excavate land near the Habur border gate. The two had disappeared in the late 1990s. If human bones are discovered during the excavations, the remains will be compared with DNA samples of the two businessmen.discovered during the excavations, the remains will be compared with DNA samples of the two businessmen.