Turkey's Constitutional Court finds neglect case on Ankara Massacre by public officers inadmissible

Turkey's Constitutional Court found an individual application related to the ISIS massacre in Ankara, which accused public officers of neglect, as inadmissible. A suicide attack outside the Ankara railway station killed more than one hundred people and injured more than five hundred on Oct. 10, 2015.

Monday December 18 2023 11:00 pm

A placard that reads, "We will not forget Oct. 10!"

Duvar English

Reporting by Deutsche Welle Turkish on Dec. 18 revealed that the Constitutional Court of Turkey (AYM) rejected to take on an individual application about the Oct. 10, 2015 Ankara Train Station Massacre where Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) suicide bombers killed 103 people.

The application dated 2016 sought to reopen an investigation into public officers’ neglect before and after the attack. Seven years later, the AYM on Dec. 14 found the application “inadmissible,” and marked the exhaustion of all domestic legal remedies regarding the Ankara Massacre.

The lawyers involved in the case are anticipated to file an application with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) as the final step, given that Turkey recognizes the ECHR as the ultimate court that can be approached after exhausting all domestic channels.

Senem Doğanoğlu, one of the lawyers in the case, evaluated the AYM verdict as a “persistent effort by all executive and legal authorities of Turkey to keep the Oct. 10 Massacre unresolved.”

Turkey’s Interior Ministry had launched an investigation into public officers’ neglect regarding the attack and found evidence of neglect by key officers such as the Ankara Chief of Police, Counterterrorism bureau chiefs, and an Intelligence officer.

However, the Ankara Governor’s Office rejected the request to formally investigate the individuals identified in the Interior Ministry report, and the case was closed.

Victims of the Oct. 10 Massacre then filed an individual application to the AYM to reopen the investigations on the abovementioned individuals alongside police officers who used pepper spray in the immediate aftermath of the explosion with the dead and injured present. The application also concerned the tardiness of first responders after the attack and the lack of investigations that followed.

The application cited violations of the right to life, the prohibition of maltreatment, and the indiscriminate right to protest and demonstrate.

A suicide attack outside the Ankara railway station killed more than one hundred people and injured more than five hundred on Oct. 10, 2015.

The massacre went down as the deadliest terror attack in modern Turkish history. The victims were largely supporters of the Kurdish-oriented and liberal-left People’s Democratic Party (HDP). They had gathered to march for peace ahead of national elections on Nov. 1.

The attack was attributed to ISIS, however, opposition figures have maintained the neglect of the Turkish Intelligence Agency and security forces was decisive in the magnitude of the massacre.