The killing of Kurdish human rights lawyer Tahir Elçi remains unpunished. A regional appeals court in Amed rejected the appeal against the verdict of a local jury chamber, which acquitted three accused police officers of the charge of negligent homicide in 2024. The Amed Bar Association said it will file a constitutional complaint.

Lawyer Tahir Elçi was killed in Amed on 28 November 2015. The then president of the Bar Association held a press conference in the old borough of Sûr about the curfews and military operations in Kurdish cities. He had just called on the Turkish government to make peace when police officers opened fire on two fleeing members of the Civil Defense Units (YPS). They had shot two police officers nearby shortly before. At the end of the shooting, lawyer Elçi died. He was shot in the head from behind.

The Turkish government immediately claimed that Elçi had been shot by the defense units' members. The Bar Association, on the other hand, said that the 49-year-old lawyer had been the target of an attack carried out by police officers. A few weeks before his death, Elçi had come under attack by the authorities because he had stated on a television program that the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) was not a terrorist organization. In October 2015, he was temporarily arrested for this reason. He was facing trial on charges of "terrorist propaganda." Elçi had also reported death threats against him from nationalist circles.

The authorities nevertheless accused the YPS of shooting Elçi. However, an investigation commissioned by the Diyarbakır Bar Association to the research group "Forensic Architecture" from London's Goldsmiths University in early 2019, found that only three police officers could be considered as the perpetrators of the killing, and that one of them was "certainly" the shooter. It was not until a year and a half later that charges were brought against police officers Sinan Tabur, Fuat Tan and Mesut Sevgi. However, the 10th Criminal Division of the Diyarbakır Criminal Court acquitted the police officers last June.

The court followed the prosecutor's request, which said that Tahir Elçi was killed by a bullet whose origin could not be determined. The prosecution had previously demanded prison sentences of at least two, and a maximum of six years.

Constitutional complaint announced

After the verdict, the Tahir Elçi Foundation, which had appeared as a co-plaintiff in the proceedings, filed an appeal. According to lawyer Mahsun Batı, who is also chairman of the foundation, the regional appeals court was not convinced of the involvement of the accused police officers in the killing of Elçi, nor of the "numerous deficiencies" with which the proceedings were tainted. Batı was appalled. He told the Mezoptamya (MA) news agency that the Elçi case was an example of impunity towards victims of state actors. He also announced that he would submit an application for a retrial to the Constitutional Court in Ankara.