Vedat Aydın

Vedat Aydın (1953 – 7 July 1991) was a Kurdish politician and human rights lawyer. He was married to Sükran Aydın.

Vedat Aydın
Died7 July 1991
Cause of deathMurder
Body discoveredMaden, Elazığ
Resting placeDiyarbakir
NationalityKurdish
CitizenshipTurkish
OccupationLawyer
Political partyHEP
Spouse(s)Sükran Aydın

Professional and political career

He was the head of the Diyarbakir branch of the Turkish Human Rights Association (IHD) and the People's Labor Party (HEP) and faced trial for delivering a speech in Kurdish language during the IHD annual meeting in October 1990. During the time the speech was delivered, holding speeches in Kurdish in public settings was forbidden.[1]

Assassination

He was killed in July 1991. On July 5, armed men identifying themselves as police officers showed up at his home and forced him into a car. On the 7 of July his body was found under a bridge just outside the boundaries of the province Diyarbakir, in the Maden district of the province of Elazıĝ.[2] He was immediately buried at the Maden Municipality, but later an autopsy was done and after it was confirmed the body belonged to Aydın, he was reburied in Diyarbakir. His skull was fractured, his legs broken und about 15 bullets were shot in his body. 8 bullets were found in his body. No one was charged for the murder of Vedat Aydin. At his funeral in Diyarbakir on the 10 of July, the police fired live ammunition into a crowd of thousands of mourning people. The police claimed stones were thrown from within the crowd, eyewitnesses denied this, though.[3][4] As a result, 7[3] to 13 people were killed[5] and up to 100 people were injured. Protests against these events took place in the next days Diyarbakir, Nusaybin, Lice, Uludere and Bismil.[6] Nobody was charged with the killing of the attendants of the funeral cortege. On the 4 December 1993 a delegation of DEP parliamentarians came under an armed attack as they were on a mission in Batman trying to find out who killed Aydın. As a result, the MP for Mardin Mehmet Sincar and the local party leader of Batman were killed and MP for Batman Nizamettin Toğuç was injured together with three others.[7] The investigation into the murder of Vedat Aydın went on, but in the year 2009, 18 years after his murder, a court in Malatya decided to close the investigation about the murder of Aydin and returned the file to Diyarbakir due to lack of jurisdiction.[2]

References
  1. "Vedat Aydin, President of People's Labour Party in Diyarbakir, member of the Turkish Human Rights Association" (PDF). Retrieved 2019-12-04.
  2. Erol Önderoğlu (17 September 2009). "VEDAT AYDIN MURDER: Murder File Returned to its Origin after 18 Years". Bianet - Bagimsiz Iletisim Agi.
  3. "HSW". www.hrw.org. Retrieved 2019-03-17.
  4. "Wife of slain Kurdish politician Vedat Aydin says husband killed by Turkish intelligence JITEM". ekurd.net. March 2, 2010.
  5. "Mahmut Kaya: Widerstand ist legitim". ANF News (in German). Retrieved 2019-03-17.
  6. Orhan, Mehmet (2016). Political violence and Kurds in Turkey. Routledge. p. 184. ISBN 9781315688206.
  7. Gunes, Cengiz (2013-01-11). The Kurdish National Movement in Turkey: From Protest to Resistance. Routledge. p. 163. ISBN 9781136587986.


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