A university student in İstanbul has been allegedly brutalized by roommates due to his Kurdish and Alevi identities, according to local media reports.
The student, identified only by the initials F.B., was having difficulties with his two roommates in the dormitory and suffered injuries due to a violent incident, which led to hospitalization in mid-November, the reports said.
Prosecutors have launched an investigation into the attack, gathering audio recordings of prior conversations where F.B.’s roommates threatened to kill him if he didn’t move to another room.
“You are an inferior race. You should be exterminated,” one of the roommates was recorded as saying. “Turkey’s east should be set on fire.”
Alper Sarıca, F.B.’s lawyer, accused the school management of negligence for failing to sanction the alleged perpetrators despite audio evidence of hate speech.
Human rights defender Eren Keskin pointed out that the alleged attackers are free, complaining of impunity.
“The torturer is free despite audio evidence because he’s a racist,” she said on social media.
Turkey’s Kurdish minority has been under an increasing pressure since the breakdown in mid-2015 of peace talks between the government and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed separatist group designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey and much of the international community.
The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been in an alliance with the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and has adopted a hawkish tone against the Kurdish political movement, echoed by the pro-government mainstream media.
The climate of hostility has resulted in numerous alleged hate crimes in which ethnic Kurds were physically or verbally assaulted due to their identity. Some of these incidents ended in injury and even death.
