A Kurdish doctor, Abdulkadir Sabri Toprak, originally from Turkey’s Kurdish-majority province of Bitlis (Bedlîs), was shot dead on Thursday by unidentified assailants who remain at large in the city of Sulaymaniyah (Silêmanî) in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI).
Toprak, a father of three, had left Turkey due to political pressure and found refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan 12 years ago.
According to Rojnews, Toprak was hit by four bullets, causing his immediate death at the scene, and the circumstances of the crime indicate a targeted attack.
Observers suggest that the assailants may have links to Turkish intelligence, given the recent open threats by Turkish officials against the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), whose core constituency is based in Sulaymaniyah, and the earlier series of assassinations of political asylum seekers in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Assassinations of Kurdish political activists
The Turkish National Intelligence Organisation is believed by many in Iraqi Kurdistan to have organised the assassinations of Kurdish political activists in the region since 2021.
In January, Firyal Silêman Xalid, a Kurdish politician originally from Hasakah (Hesekê) in north-eastern Syria, was assassinated in broad daylight in Kirkuk (Kerkûk), Iraq.
Hüseyin Arasan, a member of the Mesopotamia Workers’ Association, was killed in Sulaymaniyah in June 2023. Arasan had left Mardin (Mêrdîn) in Turkey because of legal proceedings against him.
In April 2023, Hüseyin Türeli, a Kurdish citizen of Turkey who migrated to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq because he was being prosecuted for political offences in Turkey, was killed in an armed attack in Duhok.
Nagihan Akarsel, a Kurdish feminist academic and founding member of the Jineolojî Academy in Sulaymaniyah, was fatally shot outside her home in Sulaymaniyah in October 2022.
Kurdish political activist Yasin Bulut was assassinated in Sulaymaniyah in September 2021, one day after Ferhat Barış Kondu, a political refugee and Kurdish political activist, was shot and wounded by masked assailants at his office in Sulaymaniyah.
Mehmet Zeki Çelebi, a Kurdish activist who moved from Turkey to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq to escape persecution, was murdered in May 2022.
Reaction in Turkey
The assassination of Dr Toprak in Sulaymaniyah has sparked controversy and heated debate in Turkish parliamentary discussions. During the general assembly on Friday, Gülistan Kılıç Koçyiğit, deputy leader of the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) Party, held Turkey responsible for political assassinations in Iraqi Kurdistan, including that of Toprak.
Holding a photograph of the doctor, who had been working in a hospital in Sulaymaniyah, Koçyiğit accused the Turkish government of turning the Kurdish city into an “open MİT (National Intelligence Organisation) base”.
Koçyiğit strongly questioned the motives behind such killings, referring to statements made by a Turkish ambassador after Akarsel’s murder, which suggested a policy of targeting those associated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
