Foundation in memory of Gezi victim Ali İsmail Korkmaz opens on birthday

HATAY – Doğan News Agency

DHA Photo

A foundation named after Ali İsmail Korkmaz, a young student who died after being fatally beaten during last year’s Gezi protests in Eskişehir, was opened in the southern province of Hatay on March 18, on his 21st birthday.

The Ali İsmail Korkmaz Foundation (ALİKEV) has been established in his hometown of Antakya. Korkmaz’s personal possessions, including the clothes he was wearing on the day he was beaten up, are being displayed in a room of the foundation, which also include a library with 6,000 books.

Emel Korkmaz, Ali İsmail’s mother, said her son would continue to celebrate birthdays, “despite being killed by murderers.”

“He would have turned 21 if he was alive. Can there be a birthday of a child who does not exist anymore? There will be thanks to this foundation. I see Ali when I come here. I don’t want to stay at home, I want to come here. Because there are youngsters here who think in the same way as Ali and embrace him,” she said.

The motivation behind the foundation was Korkmaz’s efforts to help those in need with his friends when he was a student, said his brother, lawyer Gürkan Korkmaz.

“Parks, streets and bridges have been named after Ali İsmail. But the best idea to represent him was a foundation to keep alive his intentions. So we have come together with the idea of the foundation in order to keep him alive, to complete the unfinished world, the free world that existed in his dreams. We want productive young people who do activities for the benefit of society to join us,” he said

Ali İsmail’s father, a construction worker by profession, was one of those who worked to renovate the foundation building along with other family members and relatives.

Korkmaz was beaten to death by a group of officers and civilians in the Central Anatolian province of Eskişehir during the 2013 Gezi protests.