Top Turkish court orders compensation to Gezi Park victim Ali İsmail Korkmaz's family

Turkey's Constitutional Court has ordered the state to pay compensation to the family of Gezi Park victim Ali İsmail Korkmaz over the violation of the prohibition of torture. The top court also ordered a retrial of one of the police officers who was acquitted in the murder case. Korkmaz's family found the top court's ruling insufficient as it rejected their applications for several other violations.

Tuesday August 09 2022 03:36 pm

Duvar English

Turkey's Constitutional Court has announced its ruling with regards to the murder case of Ali İsmail Korkmaz, who was beaten to death on June 2, 2013 by a group of police officers and civilians in the western province of Eskişehir during the Gezi Park protests.

The court ruled that there had been a violation of the Constitution's Article 17 on the prohibition of torture which reads as follows: “No one shall be subjected to torture or mal-treatment; no one shall be subjected to penalties or treatment incompatible with human dignity.”

The court ordered the state to pay Korkmaz's family 67,500 liras in compensation and also ordered a retrial of the police officer Hüseyin Engin who was previously acquitted in the case.

Korkmaz's family found the top court's ruling insufficient as it rejected their applications of “violation of the right to life,” “violation of the right to assembly and demonstration” and “violation of bad treatment of the applicants themselves.”

The family said that they were also expecting a retrial for police officer Mevlüt Saldoğan, as the 10-jail term handed down to him in 2015 was “inadequate.”

“The fact our application was not completely rejected and that one police officer will be retried is relatively pleasing,” Korkmaz's brother Gürkan Korkmaz, who is a lawyer by profession, said.

The murder case's lawyer Ayhan Erdoğan said that they will now file an application with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) due to the “insufficiency” of the top court's ruling.

“The immaterial compensation has been granted on the lower limit. Neither the compensation nor the verdict is sufficient,” lawyer Erdoğan said, adding that there are photographs and videos confirming also the "police and state torture" inflicted upon the Korkmaz family in the aftermath of their son's death during the trial process.

“There should have been also a verdict for the violation of the prohibition of torture in terms of Ali İsmail Korkmaz's family,” he said.