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In the Ceylanpınar district of Turkey’s southeastern province of Urfa (Riha), two police officers were found dead in their flats on 22nd July 2015. This incident triggered the conflict between the Turkish armed forces and Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) as the government blamed the PKK for the murder and called off the peace process after two years.
The murder of two police officers took place only two days after an ISIS suicide bomber killed 33 young socialist activists in Urfa’s Suruç district.
33 young people were killed on 20th July 2015 during a press conference they had organised before they passed to Kobane, Syria to help with the rebuilding of the war-torn Syrian Kurdish town.
Following the bombing and the consecutive murder of two police officers, the turmoil has increased and on 24th July Turkey launched a military air bombing campaign on the Qandil mountains to hit the PKK targets that became the final act of crushing the peace talks.
Regarding the murder of the two police officers, ten people were detained, seven of them were interrogated under torture and sent to jail by the court, MA reports.
In the final hearing of the case, which was seen on 1st March 2018, all defendants were acquitted of all the charges. And after that no investigation was opened again to find the perpetrators of the murder of two police officers, leading the murders to remain unsolved for six years.
“The peace process was ended at a moment’s notice following this incident. However, the perpetrators of this incident have never been found. This case has been turned into an unsolved murder,” Eyüp Sabri Tinaş, one of the lawyers of the case told MA.
At the crime scene there were the finger prints of four other police officers, said Tinaş. However, no investigation has ever been opened against these four officers. “They were questioned, but only as witnesses, not as suspects.” Tinaş said.
Tinaş then explained the questioning of his clients that reveals that the police tried to label them as the perpetrators of the killings in order to close the case rather than deepening the investigation to find the real perpetrators.
“Our clients were subjected to torture, but despite the torture they did not plead guilty neither at the court nor during the police questioning. But since they did not plead guilty, they were subjected to yet more torture. The pressures increased drastically on our clients after they reported the torture they were subjected to.”
Tinas stressed that the peace process was brought to an end and 6 years was destroyed for nothing, using these murders as a pretext. He said, “Thousands of people died after this happened. It was a disaster. The government did not take the acquittal decision of the court into account at all.”
