Arrested and tortured after protesting against racist murder

The Green Left Party (YSP) organized a protest at the place where musician Cihan Aymaz, who lost his life in a racist attack last Wednesday, was killed. Two demonstrators, Aydın Koçuk and Mehmet İkto, who took part in the rally, were followed by the police after the demonstration and later arrested.

According to the Mezopotamya agency, Koçuk and İkto were tortured, verbally abused and insulted by the police at the police station. The protesters, who were tortured for hours, were sent to court on charges of “resisting” the police. Koçuk and İkto, who testified at the prosecutor’s office, were later released.

Müslüm Kocaoğlu, the lawyer of the two tortured young men, said that they had prepared a report on the police beating of his clients. He also stated that the police officers who carried out the torture were Ercan Bulut and Kemal Aslan and that they were suspects in the case.

The racist murder of Kurdish musician Cihan Aymaz

Cihan Aymaz, a Kurdish Street musician, was killed in a racist attack in Istanbul’s crowded district of Kadıköy. Aymaz, who refused the request of Mehmet Caymaz to sing the song “Ölürüm Türkiyem” (I’ll die for you, my Türkiye), lost his life after getting stabbed by Caymaz.

Shortly after the murder, Mehmet Caymaz was taken into custody by the police. It turned out that Caymaz had a record of many crimes. He has 13 criminal records of drugs, injury, qualified robbery, threats, insults and damage to property. In his statement to the police, Caymaz admitted that he asked Cihan Aymaz to play the nationalist song.

Aymaz’s brother Diyar Aymaz declared that the murderer should receive the heaviest punishment so that similar crimes will not happen. Aymaz, wondering how a person with 13 previous convictions could walk around the heart of Istanbul with a knife in his pocket, asked: “How could someone with 13 previous convictions be released?”