CASES

34-year-old Seyithan Durdu was shot and killed on the night of 28 December 2024 by Lieutenant Yiğithan Adalı, the Patrol Commander at the Özalp Tulgalı Border Post in the Özalp district of Van.

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Mikail Ekinci was shot and killed by law enforcement officers on 1 April 2023 in Gulabaxça (Gülbahçe) village of Çermik district of Diyarbakır for disobeying a stop warning.

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On 3 December 2015, Dilan Kortak was killed during a police operation at the house where she was staying in the Sancaktepe district of Istanbul. According to the crime scene report, police had received intelligence that Kortak might be the person believed to be preparing an attack against the police. Officers went to the address and entered the house.

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On 11 October 2015, three-and-a-half-year-old Tevriz Dora was shot in the head while being held by his mother outside a neighbour’s house near their home in Adana. He was taken to Çukurova Dr. Aşkım Tüfekçi State Hospital, where he died later that day. According to the autopsy report, he died from a gunshot wound to the head that caused skull fractures, cerebral hemorrhage and damage to brain tissue.

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On 14 June 2020, Erhan Görür, aged 20, was fatally shot by First Lieutenant Yasin Erkoç in a rural area of Kaşkol (Qaşqol) neighbourhood in the Başkale district of Van, while crossing into Türkiye from Iran. Saim Yılmaz was seriously injured in the same incident.

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On 2 May 2019, Sertip Şen was shot while grazing his animals in Onbaşılar (Wargenima) village in the Yüksekova district of Hakkari. The shot came from a military area. Şen was taken to Yüksekova State Hospital, where he died the same day. An autopsy conducted on 3 May 2019 found that he died from internal bleeding and injuries to major blood vessels and internal organs.

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On 14 April 2019, 20-year-old Recep Hantaş was killed by police gunfire at around 3.20 a.m. in Sümer Park, in the Yenişehir district of Diyarbakır. The Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation the same day. Police officer Kazım Bozkurt was remanded in custody.

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On 31 May 2011, ahead of a campaign rally by then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the Hopa district of Artvin, a group gathered to make a press statement about the impact of hydroelectric power plants in the region, the problems faced by tea producers and other issues. Erdoğan had not yet arrived in Hopa and the rally had not begun when the press statement started.

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Since 27 May 1995, the Saturday Mothers/People have gathered every Saturday at Galatasaray Square for a sit-in and press statement, demanding information about the fate and whereabouts of their relatives who were forcibly disappeared and calling for those responsible to be brought to justice. Police intervened in their 700th weekly gathering.

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Sixteen-month-old Mehmet Uytun was seriously injured on 9 October 2009 when a gas canister struck him in the head while he was in his mother’s arms on the balcony of their home in Cizre, Şırnak. He died after spending 10 days in intensive care at Diyarbakır State Hospital.

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On 28 November 2015, Tahir Elçi, President of the Diyarbakır Bar Association, was fatally shot in the head during an armed clash in the Sur district of Diyarbakır. At the time, he was making a press statement in front of the Four-Legged Minaret to draw attention to the damage that armed clashes in the city were causing to its cultural heritage.

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Cihan Can was killed on 27 December 2019 when he was run over by an armoured police bus driven by police officer Hakan Avcı while crossing Turgut Özal Boulevard in Diyarbakır.

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Eighteen-year-old Syrian Ali El Hemdan was out with two friends in the Seyhan district of Adana on 27 April 2020 when police attempted to carry out an identity check. Worried that he would be fined for being outside during the curfew for people under 20, Hemdan tried to walk away from the checkpoint.

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Twelve-year-old Helin Hasret Şen was killed on 12 October 2015 after shots were fired from a Cobra-type armoured vehicle while she was walking with her mother to a bakery in the Sur district of Diyarbakır, where a curfew was in force. Gunfire continued after Helin was shot, preventing her body from being removed from the street for some time.

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Five-year-old Efe Tektekin was seriously injured on 11 September 2019 when he was struck by an armoured vehicle driven by police officer İdris Aksoy while crossing Emek Avenue in the Bağlar district of Diyarbakır. Efe was taken to Dicle University Faculty of Medicine Hospital, where he died two days later.

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Ten-year-old Zilan Yamankılıç died on 19 June 2017 on the Diyarbakır-Bingöl highway when an armoured police bus carrying special operations police officers hit a passenger minibus which was travelling in the opposite direction. The minibus driver, Remzi Menteşe, and passenger İlhan Ayaş also died in the accident.

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On April 14, 2017, at the exit of the Kent Forest in Istanbul’s Gazi neighborhood, five children between the ages of 15 and 18 were in a vehicle at which police officers opened fire on the grounds the driver had failed to comply with a police command to stop. As a result of the shooting, Oğuzhan Erkul and Barış Kerem were killed, while Dem

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Necmettin Fendik was seriously injured after being shot during a police raid on his home in Güngör neighbourhood, Yüksekova district of Hakkari, at around 1:30 a.m. on 17 July 2017. He died the following day at Yüksekova State Hospital.

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Sadeddin Özbahçeci died on 9 April 2016 after being shot in the back by special operations police officers while he was at the scene of a traffic accident in Mardin’s Derik district to help those involved in the accident.

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Kemal Kurkut died on 21 March 2017 after being shot by police officers at a checkpoint as he arrived to attend the Newroz celebrations in Diyarbakır. In a statement issued on the same day, the Diyarbakır Governor’s Office announced that Kurkut was carrying a knife and that police had intervened because they suspected that he “could be a suicide attacker.”

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On the night of 4 May 2017, an armoured vehicle of the Panzer type, driven by police officer Ömer Yeğit, who was assigned to guard the MHP Silopi District Organization building in the Karşıyaka neighbourhood of Silopi, Şırnak, crashed into the living room of a single-storey house belonging to Mesut Yıldırım.

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Şahin Öner died on 10 February 2013 after being hit by a Shortland armoured vehicle, code-named 75, during an intervention by security forces who had arrived at the scene following a report that a group of 25–30 people had blocked the road to traffic and were carrying out an illegal protest in the Şehitlik neighbourhood of Diyarbakır’s Yenişehir district.

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Berkin Elvan was critically injured on 16 June 2013 after being struck in the head by a tear gas canister fired by police during the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul’s Okmeydanı neighbourhood. He arrived at hospital in cardiac arrest, underwent emergency surgery, and suffered a severe brain haemorrhage.

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Medeni Yıldırım was killed on 28 June 2013 when gendarmerie officers opened fire on a group gathered in front of the Kayacık Village Gendarmerie Post in Diyarbakır’s Lice district to protest the construction of military outposts. Nine other people were injured in the same incident.

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Twelve-year-old Nihat Kazanhan died on 14 January 2015 after being struck in the head by a gas cartridge fired by police officer Mehmet Nurbaki Göçmez with a Mossberg pump-action shotgun. Nihat was near his home in the Yafes neighbourhood of Cizre when the incident occurred. Göçmez fired three or four shots in the direction of Nihat and his friends.

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During a military operation held in the Lice district of the Diyarbakır province on 22 October 1993, 15 civilians, along with one soldier (Yüksel Bayar), and Gendarmerie Regional Commander Brigadier General Bahtiyar Aydın lost their lives.

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In 2014, retired Colonel Hasan Atilla Uğur, Diyarbakır Province Gendarme Commander Colonel Eşref Hatipoğlu, Gendarmerie Commando Unit Commander Ahmet Boncuk, Sergeant Major Ünal Alkan, and village guards Abdurrahman Kurğa, Mehmet Emin Kurğa, Ramazan Çetin, Mehmet Salih Kılınçaslan, and İsmet Kandemir were charged with “forming or running a criminal organization, being a member of an armed gang and murder” for

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Following the 1999 indictment against 11 defendants and 2005 indictment against five defendants were joined in 2010, the trial came to be known as the trial of Main JITEM.

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Nineteen persons, among whom are former police chiefs and members of the special team, were tried by the Ankara 1st Assize Court for having killed nineteen persons extra-judicially and arbitrarily in Ankara and its vicinity during 1993-1996.

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In 2013, 23rd Gendarmerie Border Brigade Commander Mete Sayar, Görümlü 1st Mechanized Infantry Battalion Commander retired Colonel Hasan Basri Vural, 3rd Company Team Commander First Lieutenant İbrahim Kıraç, Lieutenant Murat Ali Yıldız, Second Lieutenant Serdar Tekin of the Kayseri Airborne Brigade, and Tansel Erok of the 2nd Commando Battalion Command were charged with homicide with connection to the enforced disappearance of 6 people in the

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In 1993, about 60 villagers from the evacuated and burnt down village of Kızılağaç in the Muş province went there back to get what remained of their belongings, but detained by the Kızılağaç Gendarmerie Command and taken to the Muş Province Gendarmerie Regiment Command Post.

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During a military operation carried out around the scattered hamlets (Gurnik, Mezire, Pireş, Kepir ve Şuşan) of Diyarbakır’s Kulp county, Alaca village and Kayalısu village (administratively connected to Licik hamlet of Muş), in between October the 8th through October the 25th, 1993 by the Bolu Brigade under the command of General Yavuz Ertürk, the 11 persons that were detained were never to be heard from again.

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Nine persons, all members of the same family, were killed in the Vartinis (Altınova) hamlet of the Korkut county in the Muş province on 3 October 1993, when their house was set on fire following the allegations that they had “aided and abetted an illegal terrorist organization”.

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A case was brought against Mardin, Derik Gendarmerie Commander Brigadier General Musa Çitil in 2012 due to the illegal and arbitrary execution and enforced disappearance of 13 individuals in between the years 1992-1994 on account of “killing more than one persons for the same reason”.

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Nezir Tekçi, a shepherd living in the Yukarı Ölçek hamlet connected administratively to Yüksekova township of Hakkari was detained by soldiers on April 26, 1995 and was never heard from again. Upon the application of his father in 1997, an eye witness, Yunus Şahin said he had seen Nezir Tekçi being killed whereupon an investigation was started.

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Due to the arbitrary killing and enforced disappearance of 21 individuals between 1993 and 1995, a suit was filed against Cizre town Gendarmerie Commander at the time, retired colonel Cemal Temizöz, former Cizre Mayor Kamil Atağ, Kukel Atağ, Temer Atağ, Adem Yakin, Fırat Altın (Abdulhakim Güven), Hıdır Altuğ and Burhanettin Kıyak in 2009, on grounds of forming an entity with the intention of committing crimes, joining this entity by becoming a

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On 4 August 2020, İbrahim Baykara was killed by gunfire from soldiers in Yücellen neighbourhood, in the Çaldıran district of Van. The incident took place within Türkiye, approximately 230 metres from the border with Iran.

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