‘Who is Demirtaş’ Violence by Police Against Tourist from Germany

Click to read the article in Kurdish /  Turkish

Leonard Viohl, from Germany, has been beaten by police as police found a paper reading “Free Demirtaş” in İstanbul’s Tarlabaşı neighborhood.

Speaking to bianet, Viohl said that the police officers put him into a small room at the entrance of a building and beat him there, and then released him without an official detention proceeding.

The incident can be heard on the tape recorder, which was kept on Viohl during the incident. The police officers are heard saying “So, Free Demirtaş? Who the hell gave this to you! Demirtaş is a terrorist, you are a terrorist too! Why the hell have you come to Turkey? You don’t speak Turkish, you come to Turkey. Are you an agent? What the hell is your purpose? You don’t understand Turkish but I’ll f.ck you”.

Coming to Turkey as a tourist, Viohl said “Until now I have no Idea why they we're letting me go but I think my german passport was the reason and they wanted to scare me without getting in trouble, when arresting me for no reason”.

“I wrote paper signs ‘Free Demirtaş’ on the day of arrests of HDP politicians”

Being in Germany now, Viohl explained what happened that day:

The situation you're asking about happened already two weeks ago on Friday the 4th. On that day I stayed in the neverland hostel and just read the embarrasing news about what happened the night before to the HDP polititians. I decided to write some paper signs with "Free Dermirtas" and tagged them to some walls i just passed. That was about 8 pm. Afterwards I stayed in the Hostel again with some friends, talking about the situation and the hostel staff warned me to be careful with actions like this, because you can never know, wether there are civil policemen around.

Later (about 11 pm) I went with a friend from Iran to the Talabasi Blv. He left me for a while and I was waiting at the corner, rolling a cigarette. Suddenly several guys we're around me. They were five as I remenber - in civil clothes- and showed their police cards. They asked me whether it is tobacco or marijuana, I was rolling. They saw, that it was just normal rolling tobacco, anyway they asked me my passport and wanted to know, what I was doing there. I said, that I'm waiting for a friend”.

“They accused me of being a terrorist and an agent”

In this moment one of them grabbed into my jacket pocket and found the last "Free Demirtas" sign, I still had left.

The situation became serious then. They started calling me "terrorist" and "agent" and I refused of course. Two of them we're spitting on the ground and made aggressive gestures. They told me to to go into a small room in the building next to us, they already had one man arrested searching all of his clothes (in order to find drugs I think). I hesitated to enter and one of them started kicking my legs and yelling.

“The strongest punch I received”

So I entered and they immediately started beating me. Not with full force (I now think they just wanted to scare me) but many times in the face.

They continued calling me "terrorist" and "agent" and asked many times "Who is Demirtas?". I was just standing shocked beside the wall and answered "he's nobody" in order to calm them down. It didn't work out and one of them beat me into the stomach, which was the strongest punch I received. They searched my pockets and found nothing and after maybe 5 minutes they just pushed me out gave me my passport and I walked away as fast I could without running”.(ÇT/TK)