JINHA

ANKARA – In Diyarbakır, Turkey, the families of four young people killed by state forces in the Sur district are on the 15th day of a hunger strike, demanding that the state turn over the bodies for burial. Meanwhile, new regulations in Turkey have transferred the right to burial directly to local state authorities, legalizing the police’s practice of denying families funerals for their loved ones.

The AKP government has made new policy changes in Turkey turning over the right to bury bodies to local state authorities, in new additions to the regulations for state forensic medical institutions.

The new regulation states that “in cases where local authorities have determined that the people’s health, peace and welfare, as well as public order and safety, would be negatively effected,” local authorities have control over the bodies and can bury them at will.

The regulation makes de jure the ongoing practice in Kurdistan of police killing individuals during the ongoing curfews, then refusing to surrender their bodies to families and secretly burying them without notifying the loved ones of the deceased.

(gc/cm)