Cyprus-Forum.com

[Tim Drayton]

The capsule that locals believe killed Ahmet Atakan when it struck his head was taken by Republican People’s Party member of parliament Refik Eryılmaz and Ahmet’s father and big brother to the public prosecutor’s office. The capsule is clearly blood stained and a few strands of hair are attached to it. DNA tests will reveal whether this gas capsule struck Ahmet.

Refik Eryılmaz cast doubt on the seriousness with which the investigation is being conducted, given that the gendarmerie were supposed to have conducted a detailed search of the area and failed to find this capsule.



http://birgun.net/haber/ahmetin-dustugu ... -4047.html

[Tim Drayton]

Egemen Bağış, appearing on a live TV show, was questioned by the interviewer about the Gezi Park protests and, when the interviewer reminded him that lives had been lost in those protests, Bağış commented, “If you compare that to the events in Syria in which a hundred thousand people have lost their lives, it is a mere trifle (Suriye'de 100 bin kişinin hayatını kaybetttiği olaylarla kıyaslarsanız devede kulak).”

http://birgun.net/haber/egemen-bagis-ge ... -4062.html

[Tim Drayton]

There were demonstrations in the Kurdish city of Hakkari yesterday at the destruction of a PKK cemetery. The police intervened with tear gas and pressurised water.

http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/?hn=441254&kn=7&ka=4&kb=7

[Tim Drayton]

Thirty people set out yesterday evening to march from İzmit, just over 100 kilometres east of Istanbul, to Taksim, carrying a banner reading “We will not abandon the streets to murderers” and shouting the slogans “Resist Taksim, İzmit is coming” and “We are all Ahmet, we won’t be killed off”.

http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/?hn=441460&kn=7&ka=4&kb=7

[Demonax]

Ongoing protests breaking into the mainstream news...

Turkey: Police And Protesters In New Clashes

Riot police fired rubber bullets and water cannon at thousands of anti-government protesters overnight in two Turkish cities.

In the Kadikoy district of Istanbul a rally began peacefully with a series of concerts, but as night fell chaos erupted when police charged at protesters who wanted to march to the ruling AK Party's headquarters.

Protesters set fire to barricades in the street while police attempted to control the crowd by firing plastic bullets and tear gas.

Several demonstrators were arrested and an elderly man was taken to hospital during the clashes.

Meanwhile, demonstrators and riot police faced off for a sixth straight night in the southern city of Antakya in Hatay Province, near the border with Syria.

Police used gas canisters on the protesters, who had blocked off a street with barricades that were set on fire. They later moved in with water cannon to extinguish the flames.

There have been ongoing but relatively minor protests across Turkey since the major clashes of three to four months ago.

But anger intensified again last week after a 22-year-old man, Ahmet Atakan, died during clashes between demonstrators and the police in Antakya.

Mr Atakan died after falling from a building, but investigations are ongoing. Mr Atakan's family claim he was hit by a gas canister while police deny responsibility for the death.

The latest unrest comes six months before local elections, the start of a voting cycle which also includes a presidential election next August - in which Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan is expected to run - and parliamentary polls in 2015.

http://news.sky.com/story/1142175/turke ... ew-clashes

[Tim Drayton]

32 neighbourhood forums (bodies set up throughout the country to promote dialogue after the authorities violently recaptured Gezi Park) in İstanbul Kadıköy held a Forumfest, at which the well-known singers and groups Kardeş Türküler, Grup Yorum, Bulutsuzluk Özlemi, Marsis, Yeni Türkü, Hayko Cepkin, Cenk Taner and Ceylan Ertem performed. Posters showing the names and pictures of those who have lost their lives in the Gezi protests were on abundant display.



http://birgun.net/haber/ozgurluk-ve-bar ... -4137.html

[Tim Drayton]

Ongoing protests breaking into the mainstream news...
[...]

Perhaps, but I think the Western media was surprisingly quiet about this, especially given the magnitude of the events on Tuesday 10 September.

I wonder if they would have been so quiet if these things had happened in a country not deemed to be a potential 'ally' against Syria.

[Tim Drayton]

Minister for the Environment and Urbanisation, Erdoğan Bayraktar, has announced a new plan for the road which it was planned to build on land owned by the Middle Eastern Technical University, a project which sparked off fierce protests in both Ankara and nationally, such that it will now pass through a tunnel, and has also given the assurance that any trees which have to be removed will be replanted elsewhere.

After Gezi, another victory for direct action, it would seem.

http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/bakan ... ak-1151402

[Tim Drayton]

In an expert’s report by Dr. Klaus Stanjek of the Konrad Wolf Academy of Film and Television in Potsdam, Germany into footage of the killing of Ethem Sarısülük, who died 14 days after being shot on 1 June during the Gezi protests (pictured below), commissioned by the deceased’s family and their lawyers, the moment Sarısülük was shot is described as follows:

”It has been established that the policeman ran towards the demonstrators lying on the ground and took out his gun, the protestors threw stones wide of the mark, the policeman kicked the person on the ground, then released the gun’s safety catch, fired twice into the air, on the third shot brought the barrel of the gun parallel to the ground and with this shot hit Ethem Sarısülük ‘s head and, when he attempted to flee after the third shot, only one stone hit the policeman’s helmet.”

In the report, it having been stated: “When thought is given as to why the policeman ran up to the demonstrator writhing on the ground, kicked him in the head and at the same time, on his own, ran towards a large group of demonstrators who were ready for a skirmish and, in doing so, clearly and needlessly endangered himself, it is not a situation that can easily be understood,” it has been established that there can be no question of a self-defence situation. Stressing that the demonstrators were not the cause of these successive acts by the policeman, it is said, “On the contrary, this situation must be interpreted to a large extent as the policeman acting of his own accord.”



http://birgun.net/haber/mesru-mudafaa-y ... -4360.html

[Tim Drayton]

Extracts from another expert’s report, by Prof. Dr. Cem Kaptanoğlu of the Psychiatry Department of the Medical Faculty of Eskişehir Osmangazi University, into the killing of Ethem Sarısülük:

“Officer Şahbaz was not, at any time during the event, deprived of means of defence and was not in a hopeless situation.”

“The defendant did not, due to his anger and aggression that he was unable to control, comply with this basic professional principal, and, by firing his gun under the influence of this same uncontrolled anger and aggression, caused a young man to die”

“The defendant’s attempt to assert the safety risk that he himself created and to portray the use of the gun as if it was necessary cannot be accepted. When the course of the event is examined, it is clear that the defendant police officer, in doing everything that in a professional sense must not be done, committed a serious offence.”

Apparently an earlier expert’s report commissioned by the public prosecutor’s office reached rather different conclusions from the above report and the report obtained from Germany by the dead man’s family.

http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/?hn=442162&kn=7&ka=4&kb=7