Turkish exchange student killed in Poland by Turkish national
KONYA – Demirören News Agency
Furkan Kocaman's father Celalettin Kocaman and his relatives receive condolences in front of a tent in the district of Karatay in the Central Anatolian province of Konya.
A Turkish student who had recently enrolled as an exchange student at a university in Poland’s Wroclaw city was stabbed to death at a shopping mall, his family members said on March 11.
Furkan Kocaman, a student at Turkey’s Selçuk University in the Central Anatolian province of Konya, was eating with a friend at a shopping mall on March 9 when another Turkish national stabbed him, his family members in Konya’s Köprübaşı neighborhood have learned.
He was wounded in the neck and died at the scene. The assailant was caught by police while he was trying to run away.
“He was killed by a sympathizer of the [illegal] PKK,” said Hüseyin Özgül, Kocaman’s grandfather and the local head of Köprübaşı.
The PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.
Meanwhile, officials at the Turkish Embassy in Warsaw contacted the Polish police.
"It was stated by the prosecutor's office today that the person caught as the perpetrator of the attack is Muhammet Emektar, a Turkish citizen born in 1990," the embassy said on its official Twitter account on March 12.
The reason behind the murder was yet to be identified, it added.
The 21-year-old student was killed in a “malicious attack,” a written statement by Selçuk University said.
Kocaman was studying at the Department of International Relations and went to Poland last month via the European Union’s Erasmus student exchange program.
