Istanbul: Burial ceremony turns violent when police used teargas on mourners

Istanbul, Aug 28, 2020 – Istanbul police fired teargas and chased away hundreds of mourners on Friday during the burial of a lawyer who died on the 238th day of a hunger strike she staged to protest her jailing on terror charges. Friends said Ebru Timtik weighed just 30 kilogrammes (65 pounds) at the time of her death late Thursday, which drew condemnation from Turkish opposition parties, international lawyers associations and the EU. Police fired teargas as Timtik’s friends and supporters approached a cemetery on the northern edge of Istanbul where her body was buried, an AFP team on the ground said. “Ebru Timtik is immortal” and the “murderous state will be accountable” supporters chanted after laying her lawyer’s robe and flowers on her grave.

Police armed with anti-riot shields threatened to attack the crowd unless they stopped chanting the slogans and chased after them after the ceremony. An AFP reporter saw one young boy detained. The European Union said Timtik’s death highlighted “serious shortcomings” in Turkey’s justice system. “Ebru Timtik’s hunger strike for a fair trial and its tragic outcome painfully illustrate the urgent need for the Turkish authorities to credibly address the human rights situation in the country,” EU spokesman Peter Stano said.

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US embassy bombing

Timtik was a member of the Contemporary Lawyers’ Association (CHD), a group accused of having close ties to the outlawed Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), a far-left Marxist organisation. The DHKP-C has claimed responsibility for a number of deadly attacks in Turkey, including a 2013 suicide bombing at the US embassy in Ankara, which killed a Turkish security guard. In 2019, an Istanbul court handed multiple sentences to 18 lawyers, including Timtik, on charges of “forming and running a terror group” and “membership in a terror group”.

Timtik, who had been initially detained in September 2018, was sentenced to 13 years and six months in prison, which prompted her and some other lawyers to start a hunger strike in February. She had been jailed in Silivri — a huge court and prison complex on the outskirts of Istanbul. Last October, an appeals court upheld the lawyers’ jail sentences. Timtik, who turned her hunger strike into a death fast together with another lawyer, Aytac Unsal, was moved from the prison to a hospital in July. The pair were consuming only liquids and vitamins, and a forensic report showed at the time that their condition was “not suitable” for a continued stay in prison.

The Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE), which represents bars in 45 European countries, expressed its “shock” in a letter to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It urged Erdogan to save Unsal from a similar fate by guaranteeing him a fair trial.

Security measures

Ahead of Timtik’s burial, police used teargas while forcefully dispersing around 100 of her supporters as they tried to gain access to her body outside an Istanbul forensic lab. A funeral ceremony was held later at an Alevi worship house. Police sealed off the area and deployed several water cannon trucks while a police helicopter circled overhead. Timtik’s friends and supporters had feared that her body would be buried in
secret, and around 300 people gathered outside the forensic centre when news of her death first emerged on Thursday night. “When revolutionaries or Kurds become martyrs … (authorities) hijack bodies and bury them at unknown spots at midnight,” Sinan Zincir, lawyer and friend of Timtik, told AFP on Thursday night.  “We are here to prevent such a case.”

Opposition parties forcefully condemned the death of Timtik, who friends said was born in 1978. “Ebru Timtik was massacred by the tyrants in power!” Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) lawmaker Garo Paylan said in a tweet. Turkey has in the past seen hunger strikes launched by left-leaning political groups. Last year, thousands of prisoners ended their hunger strike against the conditions of jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan around 200 days into their protest.

By Luana Sarmini–Buonaccorsi, AFP