Funeral held for woman shot during police operation in Istanbul

ISTANBUL – Doğan News Agency

DHA photo

The funeral ceremony of a Turkish woman, who died a week after she was shot and severely wounded in a police operation in Istanbul, has been held at a cemevi in Istanbul’s Sarıyer district ahead of her burial in the southern province of Kahramanmaraş.

The ceremony for Dilek Doğan, 25, who was seriously injured after she was shot by police at her home in Istanbul’s Küçükarmutlu neighborhood in an anti-terror operation against the outlawed Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) on Oct. 18, was held at the Pir Sultan Abdal Culture Association Boğaziçi Cemevi on Oct. 26 

Doğan died at a hospital in Istanbul’s Okmeydanı neighborhood on Oct. 25 after a week in coma.

Doğan’s mother said during the ceremony that she could remember the appearance of the police officer who shot her daughter.

“[The police] jumped into our home and shot my daughter. I know the police officer’s face. They should bring my daughter’s murderer here. They’re cowards, these. I will not be cowed, I will find the killer,” said Aysel Doğan in tears.

“The murderer of our client, Dilek Doğan, is the AKP,” the lawyers representing the Doğan family said in a Twitter message immediately after the young woman’s death, referring to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). 

“They’re doing this to protect their rule,” said the murdered woman’s brother, Emrah Doğan, during the funeral ceremony. “They don’t even respect the dead. They hid her body from us, and they’re even trying to tell us where to bury her. What is to you? Are we going to ask you where to have the burial? They’re even afraid of our dead. They’re cowardly and despicable.” 

According to her family, Doğan was shot by a police officer following a quarrel that erupted after she asked police officers to put on galoshes instead of simply barging into her home.

“Four police officers entered our home with their shoes on,” said Metin Doğan, Dilek Doğan’s father.

“We told the police officer who shot my daughter to wear galoshes, but he refused. Then he pointed his gun at us and my daughter was shot. The police officers left the home in a panic. There was no clash in our home. A scuffle erupted after the police shot my daughter,” he added. 

The Istanbul police, however, stated that Doğan was shot in the chest during a scuffle after a resident tried to seize police officer’s gun. 

The police at the time also told the woman’s mother that her brother had shot his sister.

Given that no criminal investigation had been launched before the police raid of the home, an investigation was launched into the shooting of Doğan, but the lawyers of the Doğan family have not been informed about the process or the evidence in the file due to a secrecy ruling by an Istanbul court.

Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş expressed his condolences to Doğan’s friends and family.

“I’m sending my condolences to her family, friends and those who love her,” Kurtulmuş told reporters in Istanbul on Oct. 26.

Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtaş also sent his condolences to Doğan in a speech he delivered on a visit to a group of workers at a factory in Istanbul’s Pendik district.

“It’s a great tragedy. Now, I wonder whether the prime minister will make his supporters boo [Doğan’s] mother in public. Or will he share her sorrow?” Demirtaş said, referring to a public speech delivered by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in March 2014, in which he made his supporters boo the family of Berkin Elvan, 15, the youngest Gezi victim, who passed away following 269 days in a coma after being hit with a tear gas canister in the head during the Gezi Park demonstrations in 2013. Erdoğan also called the young Alevi boy a “terrorist.”

“Every day incidents like this happen around the country, but nobody claims political responsibility for them.

But in the end all of them will be brought to justice,” the HDP co-chair also said.