Alongside Elci’s colleagues and widow Turkan Elci were Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Co-chair Mithat Sancar, Democratic Society Congress (DTK) Co-chair Berdan Ozturk, Democratic Regions Party (DBP) Co-chair Saliha Aydeniz, as well as representatives from human rights organizations, workers’ unions, and chambers of medicine and engineering from across the region.

“We have been searching for the killers of Tahir Elci for five years as they are protected under an armor of impunity,” current Diyarbakir Bar Association Chairman Cihan Aydin said in his speech at the historic Four Pillared Minaret in Diyarbakır’s Sur district, as reported by Mezopotamya Agency.

The first hearing of Elci’s killing “has shown that the policy of impunity present during the investigation has reflected in the court as well,” Aydin continued. “The Diyarbakir Bar Association and our colleagues in support and solidarity will fight against this effort to veil the truth.”

The chairman of the bar association said: “What has changed since Tahir Elçi was taken from us? Nothing, all remains quiet on the eastern front. The darkness we as a society are trapped in has gotten deeper. No citizen in this country can safely rely on the law anymore. Eighty million people are now suspects. It has become routine to start the day with the news of doors broken down and dozens of people detained. We are witnessing the deafening silence of the judiciary in the face of torture, extrajudicial killings, femicides, child abuse, and environmental massacres.”

Since Elci’s death in 2015, Turkey has reversed most of the progress made on the Kurdish issue, with “the whole matter abandoned to the care of security bureaucracy as the (state’s) policies of non-solution continue to take lives and hurt people”, Aydın said.

Thousands have faced persecution for expressing their ideas, and lawyers have been imprisoned for taking on clients, he also said.

A month prior to his killing, Elci told a televised discussion on CNN Turk that the classification of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK) as a terrorist organization was not correct in his opinion, and that the group would be better classified as an armed political movement. In the day following the broadcast he was targeted by right-wing groups who called him a terrorist and a traitor.

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