Grave of Tahir Elçi desecrated

On 28 November 2015, Tahir Elçi, a lawyer and President of Diyarbakır Bar Association, who spent his life defending people from the violence and abuse of the Turkish state repression machine, was murdered in Amed.

The prominent lawyer’s grave in the Yeniköy Cemetery has been desecrated. The iron fence around his burial place was removed by unidentified assailant(s).

The attack came to light after the visit of local people to the cemetery this afternoon.

28 November 2015: A planned murder

On 14 October 2015, Tahir Elçi participated in the ‘Neutral Zone’ program presented by Ahmet Hakan at CNN Türk. Asked by Hakan whether the PKK was a terrorist organization, Elçi answered: “The PKK is not a terrorist organization”.

After this program, the prestigious lawyer was exposed to an increasingly common lynching. Six days after the CNN Turk program, Elçi was taken into custody at the Amed Bar Association’s legal aid building and taken to Istanbul for testimony. He was released after his testimony: he was to undergo judicial control and was forbidden to go abroad.

On 28 November 2015, Elçi was shot and killed during a press conference in the city of Diyarbakır. It was 10.53 when Elçi was shot at the Four-Legged Minaret with a bullet in the back of his neck.

At the press conference, Elçi had appealed for calm in the city, amid a recent wave of violence. The weeks and months following his death, however, saw an escalation in the conflict that resulted in the near-total destruction of Diyarbakır’s historic centre, Sur, a historic resistance, the deaths of hundreds of civilians and the displacement of thousands more.

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