İbrahim Çay who is Kurdish, is entitled to a retrial and further compensation in the case that involved him being a victim of a racist attack and an attempted lynching that he suffered in 2015, Turkey’s Constitutional Court (AYM) said as it overturned small fines issued by a first-degree court.
The Constitutional Court ruled that the ban on torture and ill treatment had been violated, and said the fines issued to the perpetrators over abduction and simple assault had not been proportional to the crime committed, Evrensel newspaper reported.
The top court ruled for 45,000 Turkish lira (£2,360) to be paid to Çay as compensation for non-pecuniary damages.
Racist attack
Çay, who owns a greenhouse in the province, had been stripped of his clothes, beaten, tied around a statue of Turkey’s founding president Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and forced to kiss the statue. The attackers, who were the Kurdish man’s neighbours and clients, said they had been provoked by Çay’s social media posts where he wore traditional Kurdish clothes similar to Iraqi Peshmerga uniforms. Soldiers passing by the scene freed the bloodied man.
Local court turns prison sentence into small fine
The three perpetrators were acquitted of trespassing charges and each issued 3 years 4 months in prison for abduction and another 11 months for assault. The local court postponed the sentences for trespassing, and ruled for the sentences for assault to be turned into administrative fines of 7,000 liras (£370), to be paid in 24 instalments
