IZMIR, Turkey — On June 17 at 10:50 a.m., a bulky young man with tattoos and cut-off gloves, wearing a leather vest and carrying a heavy bag, walked into the Izmir office of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) and fired four shots into a young female party volunteer. Then he took a photo of her as she lay on the floor dying and posted it on his WhatsApp status with the word “Body 1.”
Onur Gencer, a health worker who served with Turkish special forces in Syria’s Manbij in January-February 2020, told the police that he had intended to kill more people but was “disappointed to find [just Deniz Poyraz] there.” What he initially planned to do, he told the police in his 27-page testimony, was to kill Kurdish political figures such as HDP’s imprisoned former co-chair Selahattin Demirtas, HDP’s current co-chair Pervin Buldan and veteran Kurdish politician Leyla Zana. Realizing that this would be too difficult, he set out to attack the party office in Izmir. Then he loitered around the building till he learned the local members’ daily schedule and purchased at least one gun to carry out the attack. “I acted alone,” he said in his initial statement to the police.
HDP lawyers and party members disagree. Holding a press conference in Izmir ahead of the trial scheduled for Dec. 29, four HDP members said that Gencer’s links to security and intelligence officers he worked with should have been carefully investigated but were not. They also called on representatives of human rights, bar associations and political parties to come to the court in solidarity to observe the trial. Various bar associations and women’s groups said that they would send representatives to the trial.
According to HDP members and party lawyers, Gencer is the “fall guy” whose links, if carefully deciphered, may reveal a complicated web of relations involving a private security company close to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, police officers, and members of the security and intelligence apparatus, including those with whom Gencer served in Syria.
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