Turkish ministry demands money from bombing victims' families

Özlem Akarsu Çelik / DUVAR

The proceedings of a court case filed by the families of the victims of the October 10, 2015 suicide bombing in Ankara, the most deadly in Turkey's history, are coming to an end. The families are suing the country's Minister of Internal Affairs on the grounds that state institutions were at fault for being unable to prevent the attack.

Though an administrative court decided that the state was not in fact at fault, it ruled in favor of reparations payments for the victims' families, though the unspecified amount was much lower than what was originally sought.

Moreover, prior to the families receiving the reparations payment, the Ministry of Internal Affairs sent them a letter requesting that they pay the ministry's lawyer's retainer fees, which ranged from 4000-12,000 Turkish lira.

“If the administrative court was brave and collected and evaluated the evidence, it would have accepted the reparation demands in full and referred the responsible public officials to the prosecutor's office. That way the families would not have been victimized once more,” said Nuray Özdoğan, a lawyer for the victim's families.

The attack was carried out by the ISIS network in Turkey

The Ankara bombing was carried out by ISIS and killed 103 people, with hundreds more injured. The attack occurred in central Ankara near the city's main railway station, where two bombs exploded at a "Labor, Peace and Democracy" rally that was organized and attended by a variety of leftist and pro-worker groups, including labor unions and the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP). The attacks were carried out by two young men affiliated with ISIS networks in Turkey.

The attack occurred after the peace process between the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the government fell apart in the summer of 2015. It is believed that the brother of one of the Ankara suicide bombers was behind a bomb attack in the town of Suruç in the southeastern province of Urfa, which killed 33 people. The group targeted was a delegation of leftists who were planning to help rebuild the besieged Kurdish-held Syrian city of Kobane, which lies across the border from Suruç.

Nine suspects were sentenced to life for their involvement in the attack by an Ankara court in August of last year.