Turkey: Kurdish Children Killed, No Consequences
by Uzay Bulut • April 15, 2022 at 5:00 am
In the indictment concerning the latest killing, the police officer said that the child "hit his vehicle".
"These reports are defective. It is a massive problem that these reports list many faults of the defendant but conclude that he is guiltless or is just secondarily at fault. It is also a huge problem that these reports are prepared not by independent persons or institutions, but rather by the police or other state institutions. Evidence was blacked out, and not collected properly. And a crime scene investigation has not been thoroughly conducted. The conclusions of these reports do not reflect reality." — Ömer Sansarkan, human rights lawyer who joined Tektekin's trials on behalf of the Diyarbakir Bar Association's Children's Rights Center, to Gatestone, April 5, 2022.
According to a 2012 report by the Diyarbakır branch of the IHD, 569 Kurdish children were killed between 1988 and 2013 by state violence such as police or military fire, gas bombs, mines, or explosions of abandoned or derelict ordnance.
Because of the "political tendencies of the government", "the actions of the public officials in line with these tendencies" and "a lack of independence of the judiciary", "human rights violations resulting from arbitrary practices by public officials are considered legitimate and the perpetrators are protected with impunity." — The Working Group on Children Affected by War and Conflict of the Children's Rights Center of Diyarbakir Bar Association, March 2, 2022.
These crimes also constitute discrimination, as they occur mostly in the majority-Kurdish region of Turkey, the report added.
"None of the perpetrators has received a fair punishment." — Ömer Sansarkan, to Gatestone, April 5, 2022.
On September 11, 2019, a five-year-old Kurdish child, Efe Tektekin, was killed crossing the street when a Turkish police officer hit him with his armored vehicle in Diyarbakir. The officer, after facing trial for "causing death by negligence," was acquitted following the final hearing of the court case on March 29.
If Tektekin had run out into the road too fast for the policeman to stop, then there would have been a proper investigation and all evidence would have been used. But the lawyers have said that the legal system protects police officers. Moreover, there have been many other similar cases of killings by armored vehicles: in none of them is the driver ever punished. These armored vehicles, are only deployed, discriminatorily, in Kurdish-majority communities. They endanger public safety and should not even be driving in the streets.
