ANKARA - Seven years ago, 18-year-old Medeni Yıldırım was shot dead by a soldier in Amed during a protest against the expansion of Turkish military bases. The shooter is still at large.

 

On 28 June 2013, 18-year-old Medeni Yıldırım was shot dead by a Turkish soldier in a village in the Northern Kurdish district of Lice in Diyarbakir during a protest against the expansion of a military base. In the trial in connection with his death, the gunman Adem Çiftçi was acquitted in the first instance, a new trial is still pending.

 

Ümit Dede, spokesperson for human rights policy of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), sees the practice of impunity in Turkey as responsible for state murders. Nine other people were injured, some of them critically, by shots fired into the crowd during the protest in Lice.

 

For years, the lack of liability for the crimes committed against the civilian population has been a grave injustice and a shocking example of the impunity surrounding human rights violations, especially in the Kurdish areas, Dede said in a statement published on the occasion of the seventh anniversary of the murder of Medeni Yıldırım by security forces.

 

He pointed out that state forces murdered people under the protection of precisely this impunity and continue to do so as they are protected by the government and portrayed as heroes. The HDP politician continued: "They receive - if at all - only ridiculous punishments, which mean nothing else than to pat them on the back.”

 

Dede affirmed that the HDP would continue to stand by the Medeni Yıldırım’s family in their struggle for justice and would continue to stand by its "resistance for democracy, peace and freedom".