At Istanbul rally for dead teen, pro-Kurdish party condemns police child killings

ISTANBUL, Turkey – Top officials from Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) attended a memorial march in Istanbul where thousands commemorated the death anniversary of a teenage boy reportedly killed by police during a protest rally.

Saturday’s rally for Berkin Elvan, a teenager who died a year ago following months in a coma after being hit by a police teargas canister during the so-called Gezi protests in 2013, came less than a fortnight after a special forces officer was arrested for the January 15 death of a Kurdish boy during another demonstration.

Selahattin Demirtas, co-leader of the HDP who attended Saturday’s Istanbul rally with his wife, criticized the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, saying the government is still pushing for an internal security bill to broaden police powers, although hundreds of children have been killed on the streets during the AKP’s 12-year rule.

“The president and prime minister of this country have not expressed any regret over any of these deaths,” Demirtas said. “You have killed hundreds over the past 12 years when this bill did not exist. God forbid, thousands of people may be killed if this bill is passed,” he said.

Elvan, who was 15 when he died after 10 months in a coma, was shot in the head by a police teargas canister on June 16, 2013. His parents said the boy had gone out to buy bread.

The teenager became an icon of the massive Gezi protests after his funeral was attended by tens of thousands.

Saturday’s rally at Istanbul’s Okmeydani neighborhood was also attended by the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP).

CHP Secretary-General Gursel Tekin also criticized the draft security bill, calling it a “martial-law-like” legislation. 

“For the past 12 years, politics has been turning people's lives into a nightmare,” local media quoted the CHP’s Umut Oran as saying.

The march came less than a fortnight after a Turkish special forces officer was arrested for the January 15 death of a 12-year-old Kurdish boy during demonstrations in the town of Cizre in southeastern Turkey.

Local media said the police officer, identified only by the initials M.N.G., was arrested in Ankara for the shooting death of Nihat Kazanhan, who local witnesses have said was killed as police teams were traveling through predominantly-Kurdish Cizre during unrest in the town. 

The suspect was arrested after another police officer, who had been detained for the shooting, confessed that his colleague had done the shooting and testified to a cover-up.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had declared after the shooting that Kazanhan had not been killed by the police. “Those who claim that he was killed by a police bullet are provocateurs,” Davutoglu had said.

About two weeks previously, a 14-year-old boy was also killed during clashes in Cizre between security forces and a group affiliated with the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement (YDG-H), an affiliate of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).