A Turkish court has arrested six university students for handing out invitations to a ceremony commemorating the victims of an Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) suicide attack in the Suruç district of Şanlıurfa province six years ago, the Gazete Duvar news website reported.
The police had taken 46 university students, all members of the Socialist Youth Associations Federation (SCDF), into custody for distributing invitations in Istanbul’s Kadıköy district on Monday. After questioning by the police, nine students appeared in court, with the prosecutor asking for their arrest.
Six of the students were charged with “violating the law on demonstrations,” “resisting the police” and “preventing the police from carrying out their duties.”
The other three students were released.
A photo posted on social media showed at least one of the demonstrators was beaten by the police while being detained.
Thirty-three people were killed and more than 100 others were injured when an ISIL suicide bomber blew himself up outside the Amara Culture Center in Suruç on July 20, 2015.
The 2015 explosion occurred while a group of university students was releasing a press statement on their planned trip to the Syrian town of Kobani on the Turkish border to help with reconstruction efforts. The city, which was recaptured from ISIL by a coalition of Kurdish forces supported by the US in January 2015, was in ruins as a result of intense fighting.
