police brutality

Correspondent Michelle Demishevich beaten by police

Michelle Demishevich: “One of the police officers punched me in my abdominal cavity while I was following Sümeyye Erdoğan’s press statement.”

Source: “Muhabirimiz Michelle Demishevich’e polis dayağı!” (“Police beating to our correspondent Michelle Demishevich”), T24, 1 June 2015, http://t24.com.tr/haber/muhabirimiz-michelle-demisheviche-polis-dayagi,298422

T24 correspondent Michelle Demishevich was subjected to police violence by a plainclothes police officer while she was reporting at the press release by President Tayyip Erdoğan’s daughter, Sümeyye Erdoğan, in front of the Belgian Consulate [in Istanbul]. Our correspondent, who was removed from the area by being dragged by her hair, will be filing a formal complaint.

The AKP’s women’s branch issued a press statement in front of the Belgian Embassy in Istanbul in support of Mahinur Özdemir, an MP in the Belgian Parliament [who was expelled from her party, Humanist Democratic Centre, for acting against the party’s by-laws, which recognizes the 1915 killings of Armenians as genocide -Trans.]. After the statement, Sümeyye Erdoğan met with the Belgian Consul-General. Michelle Demishevich reported that she was prevented by plainclothes police officers during Erdoğan’s press statement following the meeting. Demishevich said: “I was about to record Ms. Sümeyye’s statement when I was shut out by a total of five plainclothes police officers, two of whom were women. Officers ignored my objections that I was a journalist. I told Ms. Sümeyye and my colleagues that I was subjected to police violence. Ms. Sümeyye said ‘please do not block the journalist from performing her duty,’ yet the police officers dragged me away from the area by my hair.”

Demishevich reported the following regarding the assault against her by the officers:

“One of the officers punched me in my abdominal cavity. I informed my lawyers Yelvi Doğan, Harika Günay Karataş, and Levent Pişkin of the incident. We will be filing a criminal complaint against the officers.”

Journalist Yıldız Tar: The police beat me

Source: Michelle Demishevich, “Gazeteci Yıldız Tar: Polisler beni dövdü” (“Journalist Yıldız Tar: The police beat me”). T24, 10 October 2014, http://t24.com.tr/haber/polisler-beni-dovdu,273415, accessed on 15/10/2014.

Yıldız Tar, who was beaten by the civil police during protests for Kobane, recounted their experience to T24.

Yıldız Tar[1], the editor of Kaos GL, claimed that they were assaulted by the police during an intervention involving pepper spray while covering the sit-in held in Galatasaray Square to protest the siege of Kobane, Syria by ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant).

“When I said I was a reporter, they ran away”

Yıldız Tar: “Police had begun to push the protesters away from Galatasaray Square towards Tophane. At that moment I saw somebody get injured and taken to hospital in an ambulance. I encountered strong police intervention as I was trying to record the incident. They beat me. They ran away when I told them that I was a reporter.”

Journalist Tar pointed out that, during the protest, the police were particularly tough on those working for independent media. It has been claimed that, during the Kobane protests in Izmir, the police told a reporter from Dicle News Agency[2]: “I know you, I know who you are, choose your side, go there or stay here.”

—

[1] In Tar’s words, Yıldız Tar was born in 2010 at Bosphorus University as they rejected the name and the gender assigned to them by their family and the society. They are an activist working with Lambdaistanbul and a reporter writing for independent media outlets. … They hate writing their autobiography and can get quite irritable when labeled as a woman or a man. (Source)

[2] An independent Kurdish news agency.

Transgender people were not taken to the hospital, instead, their bodies would be dumped on the highway

Source: Michelle Demishevich, “Translar hastaneye alınmaz, cesetleri otobanda bırakılırdı” (“Trans people were not taken to the hospital, instead, their bodies would be dumped on the highway”) T24, 11 October 2014, http://t24.com.tr/haber/translar-hastaneye-alinmaz-cesetleri-otobanda-birakilirdi,273578

Forty-year-old LGBTI activist H.Y. described the brutality that the police inflicted on transgender women at the Gayrettepe Police Headquarters at the end of the ’90s.

Leaving her family when she was 14 years old, H.Y. had no choice but to engage in sex work in order to survive. In 1996, when she was 17 years old, H.Y. was taken into custody while performing sex work out of necessity in Merter, and underwent torture for a week at the Gayrettepe Police Headquarters.

Currently 40 years old, LGBTI activist H.Y. told T24 about the oppression and torture that the police perpetrated against transgender women. Stating that police torture was systematically perpetrated against trans women sex workers for a period lasting from 1996 to 1999, she said, “The police would dump our dying friends on the highway and leave.”

Explaining that during the time she engaged in sex work in Merter she and her friends were frequently subjected to police brutality, H.Y. described those days as follows:

“While we were in Merter, the police would want to arrest us, and we would flee. They had cudgels in their hands and would throw them at our feet so that we would trip. The cudgel would land around our feet and we would trip. In fact, many of our friends died because of this. On the highway, cars would run over trans women. The police would dump our dying friends there and leave.”

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