A court in the Turkish capital of Ankara sentenced a young man to life in prison without the possibility of parole in relation to the death of four people during widespread street protests in Diyarbakır (Amed) and other Kurdish cities in 2014, dubbed ‘the Kobane Protests’, although there was no concrete evidence of his involvement in the deaths. On the contrary, he presented the court with evidence placing him far from the scene at the time of the incidents that caused multiple deaths.
Hasan Uyanık has been behind bars for the last seven years. In his police statement, he said that he had been in a café in another district at least 7 km away, and that he had later gone home. His phone records corroborated his statement, and the investigation found no surveillance or physical evidence of his presence at the scene.
Despite the lack of any concrete evidence, Uyanık was sentenced simply by the allegations made by some so called witnesses.
Witness M.A. later said that he had identified people out of police photos under pressure. During a hearing, M.A. told the court that the police told him that his sentence would be reduced if he helped identify other suspects.
“The police blackmailed me, they pressurised me. They made me sign documents without my lawyer present. I am illiterate,” M.A. said.
He continued: “I was under pressure at the prosecutor’s office as well, because there were officers present during my testimony. I wrote an appeal to the court that my testimony was taken under duress. I do not know any of the individuals here, and I did not see them at the scene of the incident.”
However, two more testimonies were then added to the case file, one and a half years later, of secret witnesses with the aliases Canary and Emerald. They told the court that Uyanık had been there.
“They were just looking for scapegoats, and one of the scapegoats was my brother,” Uyanık’s sister Avşin Uyanık told Mezopotamya News Agency.
During the protests in 2014, a total of 54 people lost their lives. A majority of them were members or supporters of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).
Official records only noted 37 of the deaths, and HDP co-chairs and officials of various levels were accused of instigating the violence and causing the deaths. The deaths, including that of a 17-year-old boy, currently constitute a major component of the court case to shut down the HDP.
The current case only includes the deaths of four people, all supporters of the Free Cause Party (HÜDA-PAR), a small political Islamist group with alleged ties to the fundamentalist Hezbollah organisation in Turkey. Among them is Yasin Börü, a 17-year-old youth who has been considered a martyr by both the Islamist and ultra nationalist groups in Turkey. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan personally mentioned Börü often, openly blaming the HDP for his death.
The street protests had started peacefully, with HDP and other pro-Kurdish groups calling for solidarity with the Syrian town of Kobane, which was under an Islamic State (ISIS) siege at the time. Erdoğan’s comments at the time that the town was “about to fall” caused outrage among Turkey’s Kurdish population, stoking the flames of the protests.
The lawsuit where Uyanık was given a life sentence also sentenced Mazlum İçli to 124 years in prison. İçli, 14 years old at the time, presented evidence to the court that he had been 140 km away, at a wedding at the time of the incidents over which he was accused of partaking.
Other suspects included Yıldız Doğanay, who was in hospital at the time. Suspect Ahmet Arif Yusufoğlu was in prison on another case, and Ersin Adıyaman was doing his mandatory military service.
