ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The co-leader of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) in Turkey, Selahattin Demirtas, has called on Turkish Interior Minister Selami Altınok to resign over video showing the dragging of a young Kurdish man on the back of a Turkish army vehicle in the southeastern Turkish Kurdish city of Sirnak on Monday, with Demirtas describing the Turkish president and interior minister as “dishonored and ignoble.”
“What happened is against humanity, it is not easy to insult the human value. Their evil behavior has conquered all limits and they violated very basic human rights in front of the whole the world,” Demirtas said at a press conference. “The premier’s [Ahmet Davutoglu] explanation over the incident is not enough.”
“It is only video footage that sparked anger in the world. Many other crimes like that take place in Turkey every day,” he continued. “I don’t say the Turkish police are all evil, but many of them are treating civilians very badly.”
Demirtas laid all the blame on Altınok, describing him as “dishonored and ignoble” for not resigning after the incident took place.
Video taken on October 3 and viewed widely on social media appears to show the corpse of a 28-year-old Kurdish man named Haji Luqman Birliki—from the Kurdish city of Sirnak—being dragged on the back of an army vehicle after being shot 28 times.
Davutoglu has condemned dissemination of the video, claiming that it could further inflame tension in the country’s Kurdish southeast.
“It is unacceptable to treat any corpse this way, even if it is a dead terrorist,” Davutoglu said, while not explicitly confirming the veracity of the video and photographs widely posted on Twitter.
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