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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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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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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