Turkish police on Friday detained 10 people who were attempting to make statements to the press at demonstrations in Ankara and İstanbul marking the third anniversary of a bombing that killed 33 in the southern Turkish town of Suruç in Şanlıurfa province, according to a report by BirGün daily.
The 2015 attack, believed to have been carried out by terrorists from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), targeted left-wing youths preparing to enter Syria to carry out reconstruction in solidarity with Kurdish forces fighting ISIL.
Police said the demonstrations were “not permitted by the governor’s office.” The protestors, carrying banners reading “Justice for Suruç, justice for everyone,” were chanting slogans when they were attacked by the police with tear gas. Policemen dragged demonstrators on the ground, battered them and detained 10.
Musa Piroğlu, a deputy of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), was also caught up in the police violence when he protested the crackdown. Journalists covering the scene were prevented by police from covering the event.
In İstanbul’s Mehmet Ayvalıtaş Park in the neighbourhood of Kadıköy, police used tear gas and plastic bullets on demonstrators and beat several up in the process of detaining them, BirGün said. Among those detained in Kadıköy was BirGün reporter Zeynep Kuray.