Elif Çermik, 64, lost her life this morning after being hospitalized due to tear gas exposition on December 22, 2013 during Istanbul Town Rally.
For the past 159 days, she had been in Dr. Siyami Ersek Chest, Heart, and Blood Vessel Surgery Education and Research Hospital and had been transferred out from intensive care. Her husband Mustafa Çermik had been by her side since the very first day.
What had happened?
Thousands in Istanbul were at Kadıköy district on December 22, 2013 for the Istanbul Town Rally advertised with the slogan, “We are Istanbul, Istanbul is ours”.
Close to the start of the meeting while people were still entering the area, the police carried out a sudden intervention. After a gas bomb and pressurized water attack that lasted approximately half an hour, Elif Çermik felt faint; her heart had stopped. Çermik was hospitalized and put in intensive care.
Istanbul Chamber of Doctors issued a statement one day after the event saying doctors had spotted two clogged coronary blood vessels in the interventional angiography they did on Çermik at the hospital, and that she had been moved to the Coronary Intensive Care Unit for medical care and follow-up.
Istanbul Town Rally Secretariat had told the press the following about her condition a week from then:
“Elif Çermik’s heart which had stopped for a long while was reanimated in Haydarpaşa Numune Hospital, where she was initially taken, and later she was transferred to Dr. Siyami Ersek Chest, Heart, and Blood Vessel Surgery Education and Research Hospital Coronary Intensive Care Unit.
“According to direct information from hospital authorities in charge of the treatment process, Çermik was diagnosed with severe heart failure and found to have an edema in the brain.
“Elif Çermik, who said in an interview before the meeting, ‘I want to live in a good neighborhood, I want a beautiful country,” is still unconscious and her condition highly critical.” (AS/PU/BM)
* Click here to read the article in Turkish.
