In the second racist attack on the Kurdish family in Konya, seven members of the family, including four men and three women, were massacred.
According to Mesopotamia, the members of Dedeoglu family, who were racistly attacked by a group of 60 nationalist Turks on May 12, were massacred this evening.
The perpetrators of the massacre also set the house on fire after killing the family members.
The family of Dedeoglu were Kurds from Kars who lived in the Maram area of ​​Konya. The assailants shouted at them the previous time "We are nationalists and we will not allow Kurd to live in this neighborhood."
Five of those arrested in connection with the attack were released due to "lack of evidence". According to Cumhuriey daily, the incident took place at around 18:50 Friday evening in the Hassan Koi neighborhood in the Maram area of ​​Konya.
In this incident, Yasar, Baris, Sarpil, Sarab, Aipek, Matin, and Sibel Dedeoglu were lost their lives. Police teams closed the area after the incident. Konya Governor Vahiduddin Ozkan and provincial police chief Angin Dinch went to the scene for investigation.
In its first reaction to the incident, pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) announced that it would hold an emergency meeting in Konya.
Co-chairs of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) are on their way to the village, the party announced.
“Racist attacks that have been forcibly flared up recently are starting to claim lives, and constitute a threat to every person who is different, starting with the Kurds,” HDP Spokeswoman Ebru Gunay said. “These racist attacks are being encouraged. This perilous game must end.”
“Impunity has encouraged the racist attack,” the family’s lawyer Abdurrahman Karabulut told Yeni Ozgur Politika.
The ruling Justice and Development Party’s Konya deputy Selman Ozboyaci called the incident “a dispute between two families” in a tweet and said it had nothing to do with racism.
Ten people were detained and six of them were arrested at the time in relation to the case, but all were released due to lack of evidence. The court issued protection orders for all suspects, Mezopotamya reported in early July.
Following the release of two suspects on July 12, Baris Dedeoglu said the family had been experiencing harrassment in the form of people in cars coming to the house in the Bahcesehir village and hurling death threats and insults at them every day.
Baris Dedeoglu, who is among the family members who lost their lives, had also told news website Duvar that their neighbours, the Keles and Calik families, had led the original attack, but were accompanied by “many strangers”. The family had lived in the same village for 24 years, and received varying levels of racist harassment for 15 of them, Duvar said.
On July 21, another Kurdish family was attacked in Konya’s Caruklikoy village, where 43 year old Kurdish man Hakim Dal was killed in a racist attack against his family.
The Dal family at the time reported people coming to threaten them to sell their property and leave. One member of the family described the attack as, a large group of people “using a fight among shepherds as an excuse to arbitrarily attack us because we are Kurdish”, according to Mezopotamya.
The pro-government newspaper Yeni Safak said last week that the incident had been sparked when Dal entered the private fields of another villager for his animals to graze on. The conservative daily said the attack had been “provoked”, and accused bar associations in 15 provinces of terrorism for having issued statements against the attack.
“HDP couldn’t get the result it desired in Izmir and Marmaris,” Yeni Safak’s Sahin Sen said, referencing two serious attacks on HDP offices in Turkey’s western coast.
Reporter's code: 50101