Violence Erupts In Turkey After Prominent Lawyer Is Assassinated On Live TV While Giving Public Speech

Violence Erupts In Turkey After Prominent Lawyer Is Assassinated On Live TV While Giving Public Speech

A day after Turkey arrested two journalists for their report exposing Erdogan's weapon deliveries to extremist groups in Syria, confirming that no dissent to the president's foreign policy would be allowed, today a new riot has erupted in Istanbul following the dramatic murder in broad daylight of Tahir Elci, the president of the Turkish bar association in southeastern Diyarbakir province, who was shot dead by unidentified gunmen while giving a public speech.



A campaigner for Kurdish rights, Elci had been criticized for challenging Turkey's official stance of calling the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) a terrorist organization.

Just before being gunned down, Elci called for peace & silencing of all guns.

The killing which was captured on tape, took place while Tahir Elci was making a statement to the media.

"The moment the statement ended, the crowd was sprayed with bullets,” Reuters cited Omer Tastan, a local official from the pro-Kurdish HDP party, as saying. "A single bullet struck Elci in the head," he said, adding that 11 people had also been injured in the incident.

In other words, a hit meant to take out the pro-Kurdish lawyer, staged as an attack by the very people he was defending.

According to the state Anadolu news agency, it was Kurdish insurgents that opened fire, killing Elci, as well as a police officer, and injuring three other people, among them correspondents of the leading Turkish media organizations – the Anatolia and Dogan news agencies

That, however, appears to be just more state propaganda, because as journalists were quick to point out, Elci not only was a pro-Kurd activist but defended the "Terrorist" PKK, which is Erdogan's political nemesis.