The Turkish police arrested 11 people at a football tournament on Saturday organised in commemoration of a Kurdish youth killed by police during Newroz celebrations in the Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakır (Amed) in 2017.
When one of the participating teams displayed a banner in protest at the 2011 Roboski massacre* and a recent killing of nine civilians by artillery fire in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), the police immediately intervened and detained 11 people.
As soon as spectators protested at the police intervention and arrests, they were surrounded by dozens of police officers.
Ferhat Encü, the co-chair of the Istanbul branch of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), said to a police officer’s face, ‘You’re committing an offence. You’re tormenting the people.’
The football tournament in commemoration of Kemal Kurkut began on 16 July. The games are being held in various cities in Turkey. A hundred and fifty-two teams, including 12 women’s teams, are competing in the tournament.
About Kemal Kurkut
Kemal Kurkut, a 23-year-old arts student, was killed by the police at a checkpoint in Diyarbakır as he was entering the Newroz celebration area.
The city governor’s office immediately released a statement, saying: “The police intervened, having assessed that there was a probability that he was a suicide bomber, because he was running towards the demonstration area knife in hand, crying, ‘I’ve got a bomb in my bag, I’m going to kill you all’.”
However, on the following day, photographs taken of the incident by a journalist emerged which showed clearly that the governor’s claims were unfounded, that not only was the young man carrying no more than a bottle of water in his hands, but also that his top half was competely naked and there was clearly nothing fastened to his body.
The photographer, Abdurrahman Gök, was later indicted on allegations of ‘membership of a terrorist organisation’
* Thirty-four Kurdish villagers including 19 children from the village of Roboski, who were transporting goods packed on mules across the border between Iraq and Turkey, were killed in an airstrike by Turkish war planes on 28 December 2011.
