Interior Ministry fined to pay compensation to family of killed Gezi protester Ali İsmail Korkmaz

İsmail Saymaz – ISTANBUL

The Turkish Interior Ministry has been sentenced to pay a total of 707,180 Turkish Liras in compensation to the family of 19-year-old Gezi protester Ali İsmail Korkmaz, who was beaten to death by police officers and civilians in the Central Anatolian province of Eskişehir in 2013. 

The Eskişehir Second Administrative Court ruled the ministry to pay 650,000 liras as non-pecuniary compensation and 57,180 liras as monetary damages in the case filed against the Interior Ministry. In its ruling, the court said the suspects, police officers Mevlüt Saldoğan and Yalçın Akbulut, as well as four civilians were sentenced to prison between three and 10 years. 

The ruling added that the actions of public officers done against the rules, procedures and requirements of the service they’ve been carrying out and the duty they undertook is in the boundaries of the administration’s service failure. 

“It is beyond doubt that security forces caused the death of Korkmaz by kicking and attacking him with sticks, together with civilians, while carrying out public service, and through that, paved the way for service failure. In other words, it is clear that Korkmaz was attacked by both civilians and public officials, the damage as a result of the incident occurred while they were carrying out public service and duty; and thus, there is a relation in the casualty between the damage and the administrative action,” the ruling said.
 
The court ruled the Interior Ministry to pay a total of 26,220 liras to the victim’s father Şahap Korkmaz, 30,959 liras to his mother Emel Korkmaz and 2,000 liras for hospital expenses, mounting to 57,180 liras in pecuniary compensation in total. 
 
Moreover, the court also fined the ministry to pay compensation for mental distress caused “for the pain, sadness and mental problems experienced by the complainants to be eased, even though partially, by taking into account the fault of the administration, the way the incident unfolded, the character of the damage and the intensity of the intention in killing.”

The ministry was fined to pay a total of 650,000 liras for the mental distress caused to Korkmaz’s family, which includes 250,000 liras each to Şahap Korkmaz and Emel Korkmaz and 50,000 liras each to his siblings, Gürkan Korkmaz, Aylin Taktut and Melike Çakırkaya. 

Meanwhile, Judge Yaşar Tunç added an annotation to the ruling, stating that the compensation ruled for mental distress caused was calculated lesser than it actually was.  

“It’s evident that the administration has fault in service and the administration violated both its positive and negative obligation. This evident and heavy service failure of the administration cannot be ignored when determining the amount of compensation,” Tunç said. 

Korkmaz was beaten to death on June 2, 2013, by a group of officers and civilians in Eskişehir during the 2013 Gezi Park protests. He died on July 10, 2013, after spending 38 days in a coma.