Turkish cop photographed killing Kurdish student walks free
Young Kurd Kemal Kurkut was shot dead in 2017 in Diyarbakir and while his police officer killer will go unpunished, the photographer who documented the incident faces serious charges.
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but eight shots taken by journalist Abdulrahman Gok scream one: murder. Gok is on trial for taking the photos in Diyarbakir on the morning of March 21, 2017. The prosecutor is demanding 20 years.
The bare-chested 23-year-old in the photos is Kemal Kurkut. He was a college student majoring in music, a violin player who traveled to Diyarbakir that day for Newroz. After almost four years of trial, the officer who fired the shot was acquitted in mid-November.
Al-Monitor spoke with Gok, Kemal’s older brother Ercan Kurkut and the family’s attorney Reyhan Yalcindag Baydemir. “Kurds are being killed, then they are being compelled to prove at court their own murders,” Baydemir said.
There is a website where such cases that would otherwise be labeled "perpetrator unknown" are documented and evidence such as videos and photos of assailants caught in the act are shared with the public. Still, justice remains elusive.
