SELÇUK AND ASKER JUDGMENT OF 24 APRIL 1998 4 9. Since approximately 1985, serious disturbances have raged in the south-east of Turkey between the security forces and the members of the PKK (Workers’ Party of Kurdistan). This confrontation has so far, according to the most recent figures provided by the Government, claimed the lives of 4,036 civilians and 3,884 members of the security forces. At the time of the Court’s consideration of the case, ten of the eleven provinces of south-eastern Turkey had since 1987 been subjected to emergency rule. 10. İslamköy, a scattered community of about 150 households, is situated in a mountainous region in the Kulp district, in the province of Diyarbakır in south-east Turkey, within the state of emergency region and near to a road that was used by members of the PKK. The facts in this case are disputed. B. The applicants’ version of the facts 11. The applicants complain that soldiers from Kulp, under the command of Recep Cömert, the Commanding Officer of the Kulp gendarmerie (“CO”), deliberately burned their homes in İslamköy on 16 June 1993 and, ten days later, returned to burn the mill partly owned by Mrs Selçuk. 12. They state that, some months earlier, the villagers had been warned by security forces that certain of their houses would be destroyed, on the grounds that they were allegedly used by the PKK, if the villagers did not leave İslamköy, although they subsequently came to believe that this threat had been retracted. 13. Nonetheless, according to the applicants, on the morning of 16 June 1993 a large number of soldiers came to İslamköy, under the command of CO Cömert, whom they knew as “Recep” because he had come to the village on a number of previous occasions. The soldiers went first to the house of Mr and Mrs Asker, which they forcibly entered and searched, telling the Askers to remove their possessions. However, while the latter were inside, trying to save their furniture and belongings, they realised that the soldiers had set fire to the house. Mr Asker told the Commission’s delegates (see paragraph 26 below) that, had he and his wife not been able to escape through a door to the barn at the back of the house, they would have been asphyxiated. Villagers who attempted to extinguish the fire were prevented from doing so by the soldiers. The house, barn and all of Mr Asker’s property, including his food stocks and poplar trees, were destroyed.