Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled on 16 May that applications filed concerning the liability of government officials in the Ankara railway station massacre of 10 October 2015, which resulted in 104 deaths, were “inadmissible.” The Court cited unclear evidence relating to the delay in medical services and to whether or not police who used tear gas were responsible for the deaths.
The massacre, one of Turkey’s deadliest terrorist attacks, was carried out by ISIS and left profound scars on the country. The Court’s decision suggested that the connections between the actions of officials and the consequent harm suffered were too tenuous to warrant legal proceedings, despite the gravity of the incident.
In response, the legal team representing the families of the victims strongly criticised the ruling. “The Constitutional Court has, by dismissing evidence of the state’s responsibility in the massacre, joined the ‘alliance of deniers’,” they stated. They further described the decision as lacking legal, logical and ethical justification, effectively absolving any state officials of pre- and post-massacre responsibilities.
The lawyers highlighted several procedural reasons the Court had used to reject the applications, including that claimants had not exhausted all domestic legal avenues and that some claims were ‘manifestly ill-founded.’ They expressed particular dismay that the dismissal was based, eight years after the event, on procedural grounds, and on grounds clearly at variance with the facts, arguing that this perverted justice at every stage.
“The outcome essentially exonerates everything leading up to and following the 10 October massacre. The Interior Ministry’s inspectors had suggested launching a criminal investigation against Ankara police chiefs for their alleged roles in the negligence, but this has been evaded,” the lawyers lamented.
The victims’ legal representatives vowed to continue their struggle for accountability despite the setbacks. “We will not let the killers or those who protected them be forgotten. We are determined to secure justice, not with crumbs of facts from the state’s table, but by clawing out the truth ourselves,” they stated.
While this ruling closes another chapter in the long saga of the Ankara massacre of 2015, it also raises serious questions about the effectiveness and impartiality of the judiciary in dealing with cases involving potential state complicity in acts of terrorism.
