Thousands mourn human rights lawyer killed during a press conference in Turkey
Thousands of people attended a funeral on Sunday for a Kurdish human rights lawyer fatally shot during a press conference in Turkey.
Lawyer Tahir Elci had led the Diyarbakir Bar Association, and officials with the group said he was the target of the Saturday attack, the Associated Press reports. Others believed Elci was shot in crossfire that also claimed the lives of two police officers. Time magazine, the Guardian, BBC News and Reuters also have stories.
Elci was facing criminal charges for “terrorist propaganda” after he said the Kurdistan Workers Party, known as the PKK, was not a terrorist organization. He later clarified that some of the group’s activities could be defined as terrorist. Both the United States and Turkey say the group is a terrorist organization.
According to Time, Elci was killed in a city in southeastern Turkey, an area that is home to many Kurds, an ethnic group with populations in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. In northern Syria, Kurdish groups seeking their own state “now govern a significant swath of territory, where they have formed a bulwark against the extremists of ISIS,” Time says.
Elci told Time in a Nov. 9 interview that the Kurdish movement in Turkey imagined it could take control of the region as it did in Syria, though he believed the Turkish government would never allow it. Turkey had been cracking down on Kurdish militants, spurring Elci to call for a stop to the fighting.
