The police detained 24 protesters in Ankara and İstanbul on Sunday during marches commemorating the ninth anniversary of the Suruç massacre of 2015, in which 33 young activists were killed in a terrorist attack, the Duvar English news website reported.
The Ankara demonstrators, chanting slogans to honor the victims of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) attack, were met by a heavy police presence. Authorities ordered the group to disperse, but when the protesters continued their march, the police intervened, detaining many activists. Several were seen being handcuffed with plastic restraints and taken into custody.
Simultaneously in İstanbul, members of a leftist youth organizations faced a similar crackdown. The group gathered in Kadıköy on the city’s Anatolian side for a remembrance event but were quickly confronted by police. Following multiple detentions in Kadıköy, the protesters moved their demonstration to the historic Taksim Square on the European side. Police attempted to halt the march on İstiklal Street, which is adjacent to the square, leading to further detentions.
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.
The Turkish government views the Kurdish militia in the region as an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed separatist group designated as a terrorist group by Turkey and its Western allies. Ankara has accused members of the anti-ISIL coalition of favoring one terrorist group over another.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was accused of supporting jihadist groups in Syria due to his remarks on a potential ISIL takeover of Kobani. The fighting in the war-torn neighbor led to violent protests in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish provinces in 2014, for which scores of Kurdish politicians have been tried and convicted for inciting an insurgency.
