When the pictures of George Floyd’s death went around the world and the video showed how the US police officer Derek Chauvin choked his victim for minutes, the Turkish head of state let his anger run free and did not mince his words. “I protest against this inhuman mentality,” said Recep Tayyip Erdoğan about the violence committed by the American police officer. However, it has now been shown that Turkish police officers use exactly the same methods for arrests and demonstrations. And that also towards journalists. But so far nothing has been heard from the very top.
During an Istanbul “LGBTI + Pride march” that has been banned by the authorities for several years, officials knocked Bülent Kılıc, a Turkish photographer from the AFP news agency, to the ground. Kılıc wanted to photograph the march for AFP, which took place despite the ban. Pictures from other journalists show how one of the officers puts his knee on the neck of Kılıc, who is lying on the ground, and apparently pulls off the air supply. According to Kılıc, a policeman tried to prevent him from taking pictures by tearing his camera away. When he defended himself, he was brought to the ground by force. The march on June 26th was broken up by the police with tear gas and clubs. Kılıc was then detained in a police station for several hours, but later released.
Unusual: The Istanbul police now publicly admitted a mistake
Kılıc himself now speaks on social media of an “attempted murder” https://www.sueddeutsche.de/medien/. “They wanted to take my life, cut off my breath,” he wrote. The photographer now wants to sue the Turkish Constitutional Court, the European Court of Human Rights “or whatever other court in the world” “as long as I live”.
The journalist had repeatedly photographed police operations in recent years, most recently during the violent student protests at the Bosphorus University in Istanbul. These had been directed against the new rector selected by the government and not by the Wissenschaftlerkolleg. One of Kılıc’s most recent photos shows a police officer holding a protester to the ground with his knee by his neck during another protest, in the same way as in the George Floyd case.
What is unusual: The Istanbul police now publicly admitted a mistake. She spoke of the legal action against the prohibited Pride march. Individual participants had “resisted” the dissolution of the meeting. “Unfortunately, Bülent Kılıc, a member of the press, was among those arrested.” He was released after his identity as a journalist had been established.