Turkey’s Constitutional Court has for a second time postponed a ruling on a yearslong fair trial complaint filed on behalf of Mazlum İçli, who was arrested at age 14 during the 2014 Kobani protests and sentenced to aggravated life in prison despite witness testimony and phone records putting him 140 kilometers from the scene.
According to the Yeni Yaşam newspaper, the court deferred its decision on April 21 after first putting the case on its agenda on May 27, 2025, and postponing it then as well.
İçli was arrested after the protests that erupted across predominantly Kurdish southeastern provinces when the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) laid siege to the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani on October 6-8, 2014. The unrest left 37 people dead. İçli, along with 21 co-defendants, was later convicted of involvement in the brutal killing of four of them as well as undermining the country’s territorial integrity and disseminating terrorist propaganda. He was sentenced to more than 124 years in prison.
Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals upheld his sentence for involvement in the brutal killing of three people in 2020, while overturning his conviction for the killing of Yasin Börü and ordering a retrial. In the retrial the Ankara 2nd High Criminal Court convicted İçli in September 2021 on charges of brutally killing Börü and sentenced him to aggravated life in prison. Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals upheld that sentence in August 2023.
His lawyer, Mahsuni Karaman, said three applications filed with the Constitutional Court in 2020, 2021 and 2023 were merged into a single case. He said the repeated delays deprive İçli even the prospect of justice while he remains imprisoned for crimes the evidence shows he could not have committed.
Defense evidence indicated that İçli was around 140 kilometers away from the scene at the time, attending a wedding in Diyarbakır’s Keçiveren village. Witness testimony and mobile phone records were presented to support this account.
The application to the top court alleges that the conviction relied on secret witness testimony, ignored evidence in his favor, lacked sufficient judicial reasoning and violated İçli’s right to a fair trial.
Proceedings in the case have been marked by inconsistencies. A prosecutor initially submitted an opinion in favor of acquittal in May 2021 but reversed that position the following month and sought a conviction. The trial court at one stage ordered a retrial and suspended enforcement of the sentence, only to reverse that decision after an objection from the prosecution.
