Tahir Elçi

Tahir Elçi
Personal details
Born 1966
Cizre, Şırnak Province, Turkey
Died November 28, 2015(2015-11-28) (aged 48–49)
Diyarbakır, Turkey
Education Law
Occupation Lawyer, activist

Tahir Elçi (1966 – November 28, 2015) was a Kurdish lawyer and the chairman of Diyarbakır Bar Association. He was killed in the Sur district of Diyarbakir in the southeastern region of Turkey on 28 November 2015.[1][2] He was shot once in the head while giving a press statement at the "Four-legged Minaret" of Sheikh Matar Mosque calling for an end to violence.[1]

Elçi was detained several times and received death threats after saying the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) should not be regarded as a terrorist organization.[3] In October 2015, Elçi was detained by Turkish authorities on charges of disseminating "terrorist propaganda" on behalf of the PKK.[1][4] On 23 March 2014, he was the lawyer of the Kuşkonar massacre case in the ECHR, in which Turkey was condemned for massacring Kurdish civilians and blaming the PKK.

Controversy surrounding death

The Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) called the shooting a "planned assassination," and protests erupted in Turkey after Elçi's killing.[1] Elçi's brother Ahmet Elçi was quoted as saying that his brother was "murdered by the state."[5] A Turkish official later issued a statement saying that "we aren't ruling out the possibility that a third party directly targeted him."[3] Turkish authorities claim that the PKK might be behind the assassination.[6] In June 2016, Turkish authorities claimed that a captured militant have witnessed PKK militants Uğur Yakışır and Mahsum Gürkhan open fire upon Tahir Elçi the moment he collapsed dead.[7][8][9]

Anti-government protests in Turkey with crowds shouting "You can't kill us all" followed the attack.[1][3]

The HDP leader Selahattin Demirtaş claimed in his interview on IMC TV that according to their investigators, the bullet which killed Tahir Elçi was fired by a Turkish police officer.[10]

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Tahir Elçi.

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/28/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.