The brother of a young woman who was shot and killed during a police raid on her family home in 2015 died by suicide on June 29, Turkish media reported.
Mazlum Doğan, the brother of 24-year-old Dilek Doğan, died in the United Kingdom where he had been living as an asylum seeker since 2022. He felt compelled to flee Turkey due to the political persecution his family had been experiencing.
Doğan was the youngest of five children and was trained to be a teacher. However, he was never appointed and was not able to work in a school. While Doğan’s older brother is currently in prison on alleged terrorism charges, his sister Dilek Doğan was killed by a police officer.
On October 18, 2015 the Doğan family home was raided by 13 police officers. The officers said they were looking for a suspect who was allegedly a member of the outlawed Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) and who could potentially be a suicide bomber.
While policemen were searching the house, a police officer identified as Y.M. shot Dilek Doğan in the entryway after she insisted that the officers put plastic covering over their shoes to avoid dirtying the floor.
An ambulance arrived 45 minutes later and took the young woman to a hospital, where she died a week later.
The police officer claimed through his lawyer that the gun had discharged accidentally in a scuffle after the family tried to snatch it away.
The Istanbul 12th High Criminal Court found officer Y.M., who never appeared at any of the proceedings, guilty of negligence and sentenced him to just six years in prison in March 2017 despite a demand by the prosecutor for a 26-year imprisonment. An appeal by the Doğan family was rejected by the court.
Dilek Doğan’s death sparked public outrage at the time, and many women’s rights and human rights activists attended her funeral and stood by her family.
The family’s ordeals were not over as Dilek Doğan’s brother, Emrah Doğan, was arrested for alleged links to a terrorist organization on January 15, 2019. He was handed a 20-year prison sentence based on anonymous witness statements.
The distraught family saw no other option than to ensure their youngest son left the country for a safer life. Mazlum Doğan had moved to London in an attempt to start over.
