The Court Reacts To The Grieving Family, Suing Them For Article 301
After losing their son Baran Tursun to a police bullet, the three members of the Tursun family are now charged, in two separate cases, with violating the newly revised Article 301 for their condemnation of the trial procedure. Baran Tursun was shot for not complying with a stop warning while driving.
The father Mehmet Tursun’s explanations during the trial of the police officer Oral Emre Atar at the 1st High Criminal Court of Karşıyaka in the province of İzmir brought him the accusations of “obstructing the trial process”, “openly denigrating the judicial organs and the police organization” and making “death threats” at three police officers.
First the son was killed, now the father will be tried
The Karşıyaka public prosecutor requested that Baran Tursun’s sister Şelale Tursun and her mother Berin Tursun are also tried for the accusations of “insult and death threat” targeting one police officer, “openly denigrating the judicial organs and the police organization” and “obstructing the trial process.”
The prosecutor Erol Bingöl demanded on the indictment he penned on March 21 that the father Tursun should be sentenced for his statements “Would you stop coming after them if your son was killed? I will be after you” and “I saw this parody during the Şemdinli incident”.
Berin Tursun was accused for saying “I will take out your eyes myself” and Şelale Tursun for saying “It will serve as a lesson, there will be as many news of that police officer and those who helped him as there was of Baran’s, I promise from here, let him be acquitted, we are not suing him either, let him go free”.
The Article 301 cases will be on June 13 and July 15
The three members of the Tursun family, who snapped at the release of the police officer Atar pending trial on January 14, will face the charges at the 5th Court of the First Instance of Karşıyaka on June 13 and at the 3rd Court of the First Instance of Karşıyaka on July 15.
During the police officer’s trial, the father Tursun had objected to the judge for putting on file the statements of the accused Atar the way they were said, without exposing the corrections, and said to the judge that “You are a judge, do not fix the contradictory statements of these police officers, what kind of judgeship is this? You had forgotten the murderer’s statement, what kind of court is this?”
Next hearing is on May 9
The police officer Atar, who shot 19-year-old Baran Tursun for not complying with a stop warning, will appear before the court for his third hearing on May 9. The Karşıyaka branch of the Freedom and Solidarity Party (ÖDP), which made a press statement titled “Not a police state, but a rule of law” about the case previously, asks his members to show up for support at the next hearing at 14:00 on May 9. (EÖ/GG/TB)