Turkey’s Constitutional Court has awarded 540,000 lira ($11,000) in compensation to a man who suffered partial vision loss after being struck in the face by a tear gas canister fired by police during the 2013 Gezi Park protests, ruling that the state was responsible for his injury and had failed to effectively investigate the incident, the Kısa Dalga news website reported.
The court also ordered prosecutors to reopen the investigation into the wounding of Selçuk Yıldız, more than 13 years after the incident and nine years after the same court first found serious shortcomings in the investigation.
Yıldız was injured on June 3, 2013, while walking to the restaurant where he worked in İstanbul’s Sancaktepe district amid demonstrations linked to the Gezi Park protests.
The protests began as opposition to government plans to redevelop Gezi Park near İstanbul’s Taksim Square in late May 2013 before spreading across Turkey and developing into nationwide anti-government demonstrations. Police used large amounts of tear gas and numerous water cannon during the protests, with many demonstrators and bystanders suffering serious injuries.
Yıldız said a police officer fired a tear gas canister at him from about five meters (16 feet) away, striking him in the face.
Hospital records documented an injury to the left side of his forehead and reduced vision in his left eye. A 2018 report from Turkey’s Council of Forensic Medicine (ATK) found that the damage to his eye amounted to the loss of organ function.
Yıldız filed a criminal complaint in July 2013, saying police had deliberately targeted him from close range.
Prosecutors requested available surveillance footage four days later, but İstanbul police said the recordings could no longer be retrieved because the period for retaining them had expired.
The İstanbul Governor’s Office later declined to authorize an investigation, and prosecutors closed the case in June 2014.
Yıldız took the case to the Constitutional Court, which ruled in February 2017 that authorities had failed to conduct an effective investigation and ordered prosecutors to investigate further.
Prosecutors reopened the case, but the investigation again failed to identify the officer who fired the canister. They issued a permanent search order in October 2018 for unidentified police officers involved in the incident.
Yıldız’s lawyer submitted new evidence in 2021, including news footage showing police firing tear gas canisters in the area. Prosecutors subsequently sought the identities of police officers, commanders and water cannon personnel deployed there as well as officers authorized to use tear gas launchers.
In its latest ruling the Constitutional Court said investigators still had not adequately determined which officers were authorized to fire tear gas canisters or questioned all the police commanders who were on duty at the time.
The court also said there was no evidence that Yıldız had participated in the demonstrations or done anything that required police intervention.
It said investigators had failed to establish why the use of tear gas was necessary or whether police had taken precautions to avoid injuring people who were not targets of the intervention.
The court concluded that the state was responsible for Yıldız’s injury and found that the severity of his treatment amounted to a violation of the constitutional prohibition of ill-treatment.
It also found a separate violation over the authorities’ failure to conduct an effective investigation.
The court ordered that the case be sent back to the İstanbul Anadolu Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office for another investigation and awarded Yıldız 540,000 lira in compensation.
