Turkish lawyer, police officer killed in Diyarbakir terror attack

A senior lawyer and two police officers have died after gunfire erupted in Turkey’s southeastern province of Diyarbakir on Saturday, Anadolu agency reported.

President of the Diyarbakir Bar Association, Tahir Elci, and two police officers were killed in Diyarbakir’s central Sur district on Saturday.

Interior Minister Efkan Ala and other officials said the assault was against police officers, and that Elci died in an ensuing clash.

Turkish PM Ahmet Davutoglu has pledged to bring to justice the killers of leading pro-Kurdish lawyer Tahir Elci.

“A single bullet struck Elci in the head”, he said, adding that 11 people were injured in the incident.

The Diyarbakir local government instituted a curfew in the area after the shooting clashes. “Tahir Elci was targeted by the AKP rule and its media and a lynching campaign was launched against him”.

“Police immediately reached for their guns and people hid wherever they could”, he said.

But the killing triggered protests from Diyarbakir to Istanbul, where police used water cannons and tear gas to break up a demonstration in the city’s Taksim Square.

The funeral has taken place in Turkey of a prominent lawyer and human rights defender who was killed in a shooting along with two policemen.

The FIDH IB members call for an independent and full investigation on the killing of Tahir Elci in order to prosecute and judge the perpetrators of this crime.

Elci, an outspoken activist who has argued many cases before the European Court of Human Rights, was arrested last month after being charged with terrorist propaganda for saying during a live news program that the PKK was not a terrorist organization.

Southeast Turkey has been rocked by a new wave of unrest that has left several hundred people dead since a two-year-old truce between Ankara and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) fell apart in July.

“One possibility is that after this terror attack, the assailants assassinated Mr Elci”, Mr Davutoglu said.

President Tayyip Erdogan said the incident showed Turkey was right in “its determination to fight terrorism”.

He was detained in October and was awaiting trial for comments he made about the PKK on CNN Turk TV.