Turkish policeman on trial for hailing killing of teen protester
Istanbul (AFP) - A Turkish police officer went on trial Tuesday on charges of praising in a Facebook posting the killing of a teenager who died from injuries inflicted by the police in the anti-government protests of 2013.
Berkin Elvan spent 269 days in a coma and died in March, aged 15, after being hit in the head by a tear gas canister fired by police while going to buy bread during the protests that swept Istanbul in May-June 2013.
Policeman Ufuk Colak was charged with "praising crime and criminals" after writing "I kiss the hands of the riot policeman who fired on your head" on his Facebook page only a few hours after Elvan's death.
"Who the hell you think you are? You were going to buy bread, huh?... From now on, you will only face discrimination!" he wrote.
Colak was brought to trial after the lawyers for Elvan's family spotted the Facebook post and launched a criminal complaint against him for "misconduct" and other offences.
The officer is facing up to two years in prison if found guilty.
In the first hearing in the trial in Istanbul's main court, lawyer Serif Ozgur Urfa, who represents the victim's family, labelled the policeman "a pathological case who takes pleasure in the death of a 14-year-old." Elvan was 14 at the time of the protests.
Berkin's father, Sami Elvan, who became a party to the trial along with his wife, told the court: "If he wrote that, I want the police officer to be punished with the heaviest sentence."
The family is seeking justice in a separate trial into the killing of Elvan, with authorities yet to identify his killers or submit an indictment.
Last year's protests started as a relatively small environmentalist movement to save Istanbul's Gezi Park, but evolved into a nationwide wave of protests against the perceived authoritarian tendencies of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, then premier.
Elvan's plight became a symbol of what rights groups have claimed are heavy-handed tactics used by police to quash the protests, which Erdogan at the time hailed as "heroic".
His death brought to eight, including one policeman, the number of people who died during the unrest.
Erdogan had sparked an outcry after he called Elvan a thug with links to a "terrorist organisation" and encouraged his supporters at a rally to boo Elvan's mother.
