Yet another child gets run over by armored vehicle in Turkey's Kurdish majority southeast

Duvar English

A five-year-old child has been severely injured in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa's Viranşehir district after being hit by an armored vehicle, Mesopotamia Agency reported on Oct. 21.

Nure Dikçe was initially taken to the Viranşehir State Hospital and then later to Mehmet Akif İnan Hospital. Her uncle told Mesopotamia that she is in a critical situation.

It's becoming increasingly common for the armored vehicles belonging to security forces to get involved in incidents in Turkey's Kurdish majority provinces, mostly due to the impunity granted to security forces. 

In November 2020, two police officers got away with killing two boys in the Silopi district of the southeastern province of Şırnak after an appeals court ruled that fining them would be a sufficient sentence.

Two children, 6-year-old Furkan Yıldırım and 7-year-old Muhammed Yıldırım, were killed after an armored vehicle driven by a police officer without a proper driving license crashed into their house on May 3, 2017.

Some 40 people, of whom 20 were children, were killed as a result of getting run over by armored vehicles in Turkey's southeast. 

Most recently, seven-year-old Mihraç Miroğlu was killed in Şırnak in September. Strikingly, the traffic report prepared after the incident said that the child was at fault. 

Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) deputy Ayşe Sürücü pointed to the increase in incidents involving armored vehicles, asking the government whether Kurdish majority provinces constitute a security concern for it. 

"Is that the reason why so many armored vehicles are patrolling?" she asked. 

Later on Oct. 21, she took the issue to parliament's agenda, asking Vice President Fuat Oktay and Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu whether an investigation will be launched into the incident.