Ezgi Orak, a university student and a member of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Youth Council, was abducted at around 5 pm yesterday in Cebeci, Çankaya district of Ankara, MA reports.
Orak and two friends were stopped by a civilian vehicle as they were walking in the street from Cebeci neighbourhood to Kızılay when four people, one of them a woman, all in plainclothes, carried out a criminal record check on them without showing their ID’s.
Ezgi Orak was then told that there had been a warrant issued against her and that they would detain her. When the people in plainclothes were asked to display the document showing her warrant for detention, they forced Orak into the civilian vehicle and Orak’s friends, who reacted to her being forced into the vehicle, were also assaulted.
Her friends told MA that Orak was forced into a grey Cornet vehicle with the license plate 06 DB 3154. Her friends also called 155 to report her missing. Ezgi Orak’s friends said they were not even informed of where she had been taken by the police.
Police later called Orak’s friends from Cebeci Police Station and took names, the license plate of the vehicle she had been pushed into and created a ‘missing’ record. However, the police later called her friends and informed them that there is no car registered with that license plate.
Orak’s disappearance has generated public disquiet and reaction and a social media campaign has been launched for her on Twitter with the hashtag #EzgiOraknerede (Where is Ezgi Orak)
Ankara’da akşam saatlerinde polis olduğunu söyleyen kişilerce kaçırılan HDP Gençlik Meclisi üyesi Ezgi Orak’ın TEM şubeye götürüldüğü bilgisini aldık. Derneğimiz üyesi avukat arkadaşlarımız bilgi almak için şu an TEM şubede bekliyorlar.#EzgiOrakNerede pic.twitter.com/2kw6vdzZyV
— ÖHD Ankara (@ohdankara) September 29, 2021
The incident reminds many of the ‘common policy’ that the state employed during the 1990s and people have reacted to her abduction and disasppearance by writing statements such as, “We know very well from 90’s the mafia government’s abduction policies, and we continue to ask #EzgiOrakNerede.”
The lawyers of Orak were later informed by the police that she had been taken to the Ankara Counter-Terrorism Department (TEM) police station. Orak is still being held there.
Ezgi Orak had also been detained on 27 November 2020 and asked by plainclothes police to act as an informer for them. To alert people to this situation, Orak had brought the incident to the attention of the Ankara Branch of the Human Rights Association (IHD) on 18 January 2021.