Turkish special forces enter courthouse as prosecutor held at gunpoint

[Syt]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/31/us-turkey-hostage-idUSKBN0MR19T20150331?utm_source=Facebook

Turkish special forces enter courthouse as prosecutor held at gunpoint



(Reuters) - A far-left Turkish group took an Istanbul prosecutor hostage on Tuesday and threatened to kill him, prompting special forces to enter the courthouse and police to evacuate the building.

The Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) published a picture of the prosecutor with a gun to his head and said it would kill him at 1236 GMT, three hours after gunmen stormed his office, unless its demands were met.

Istanbul police chief Selami Altinok said negotiators were talking to the two hostage-takers after the deadline passed. Turkish television stations meanwhile cut their live broadcasts, some citing a reporting ban.

"We are trying to bring the incident to an end without anyone getting hurt. Negotiators are talking to the assailants," Altinok told reporters.

The prosecutor, Mehmet Selim Kiraz, is leading an investigation into the death last March of 15-year-old Berkin Elvan, who died after nine months in a coma from a head wound sustained in anti-government protests.

The DHKP-C said on its website it wanted the police officer it blames for Elvan's death to confess on television, the officers involved to be tried in "people's courts", and charges against those who attended protests for Elvan to be dropped.

Witnesses said they heard gunshots as the hostage-takers entered the building.

"We were on the sixth floor. A black-haired man wearing a suit entered the prosecutor's room and fired a gun three times," Mehmet Hasan Kaplan, who works in the building, told Reuters, adding that the attackers also claimed to have explosives.

In a brief video message on a widely-followed Twitter account describing itself as that of Elvan's family, the boy's father appeared to call on the group not to harm the prosecutor.

"We want justice. We don't want anyone to shed even a drop of blood. We don't want other mothers to cry," Sami Elvan said.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu met with current and former interior and justice ministers at the ruling AK Party headquarters in Ankara to discuss the hostage crisis, officials in his office said.

Television footage showed special forces officers entering the courthouse and officials being escorted out. Armed police officers, many wearing flak jackets, surrounded the building and fire engines were positioned outside.

The United States, European Union and Turkey list the DHKP-C as a terrorist organization. It was behind a suicide bombing at the U.S. Embassy in 2013. In 2001, two policemen and an Australian tourist died in a DHKP-C attack in central Istanbul.

[Queequeg]

How retro.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

maybe they'll ask him where fehriye erdal  is

[frunk]

Probably upset about Julianne Moore getting sacked.

http://www.avclub.com/article/julianne-moore-bad-pretending-turkey-217305

ulianne Moore is one of the world's most acclaimed actresses, with a list of accolades that includes Emmys, Golden Globes, awards from the Cannes, Berlin, and Venice film festivals, and an Oscar for last year's Still Alice. And still, she can't act as though she likes Turkey for shit. According to Hurriyet Daily News, Turkey's Culture and Tourism Ministry finally called Moore out on this flagrant inability to pretend to enjoy its nation, rejecting a promotional film Moore made for Turkish tourism due to her "poor acting." It was easily the most damning criticism of Moore since her Boston-accented turn on 30 Rock, long regarded as one of the greatest slights to Turkey in its history.

Turkey hired Moore last year to star in a film titled Home Of, in which she was to be seen on an airplane, reminiscing about a childhood trip she once took to Turkey. The project reportedly cost $4 million—presumably to build an airplane specifically for the shoot, as well as to develop a clone of Moore and raise it to childhood age, for the flashbacks.

But regardless of how that $4 million budget to film Moore talking on an airplane was spent, it was apparently all a huge waste. Officials who saw the finished product disapproved of her performance and demanded a reshoot. Moore probably declined, knowing deep down that she couldn't act like she liked Turkey her way out of a paper bag. Do they even have paper bags in Turkey? Don't ask Julianne Moore.

But even before Moore appeared in the ad, she was already a controversial choice. Numerous politicians criticized Moore's "depressive persona" as being unsuitable for the film, which was intended to suggest that Turkey is a lighthearted, happy place, so long as you are not Kurdish, Jewish, a journalist, homosexual, or female. Others also criticized the choice of "using a woman's body to promote the country," as Moore egregiously insisted on having a body while she talked. One particularly dramatic parliament member blasted the idea of using a Hollywood star to shill for the country, likening it to being "as if it were the 19th century"—a dark time when the Crimean War saw their land bombarded by cannons loaded with famous actors.

At the time, Emre Yucel, a partner at the ad agency that hired her, said he'd chosen her in hopes of attracting wealthy U.S. and British tourists, and responded to these objections by exclaiming, "I can't understand why she is not liked here." Clearly, Yucel never saw her work in movies such as Short Cuts, Magnolia, The Big Lebowski, etc., where Moore's every scene is overshadowed by the fact that she obviously knows nothing about Turkey.

[Valmy]

The power of Hollywood in the 19th century cannot be underestimated.

[Sheilbh]

Prosecutor died of his wounds

[Valmy]

Prosecutor died of his wounds

[crazy canuck]

Do I understand this correctly?  They shot the guy who was going to bring the guilty to justice because they wanted justice?

[The Brain]

Do I understand this correctly?  They shot the guy who was going to bring the guilty to justice because they wanted justice?

Are you thinking in a box? Are you thinking in a cardboard box?

[Ideologue]

Do I understand this correctly?  They shot the guy who was going to bring the guilty to justice because they wanted justice?

I think the subtext is that the gunmen were somewhat dubious that the prosecutor was going to bring formal charges against the accused police officers.  I know it's incredibly hard to believe, but in some places in the world, the police get basically a free pass.

[crazy canuck]

Do I understand this correctly?  They shot the guy who was going to bring the guilty to justice because they wanted justice?

I think the subtext is that the gunmen were somewhat dubious that the prosecutor was going to bring formal charges against the accused police officers.  I know it's incredibly hard to believe, but in some places in the world, the police get basically a free pass.

But wouldn't it make sense to kill the guy if he failed in his duty rather than simply assuming that would be the case.

[viper37]

But wouldn't it make sense to kill the guy if he failed in his duty rather than simply assuming that would be the case.

they're communists.  It's not like they make sense. At all.

[Ideologue]

Do I understand this correctly?  They shot the guy who was going to bring the guilty to justice because they wanted justice?

I think the subtext is that the gunmen were somewhat dubious that the prosecutor was going to bring formal charges against the accused police officers.  I know it's incredibly hard to believe, but in some places in the world, the police get basically a free pass.

But wouldn't it make sense to kill the guy if he failed in his duty rather than simply assuming that would be the case.

Maybe they decided immediate action was necessary.  Maybe the prosecutor gets beefed up security when he declines to charge the officers.  Maybe he's got a history and they didn't like him.  Maybe they didn't care and as a representative of the government, they deemed him a proper target.  None of these things is terribly irrational, though from a PR perspective I concede that waiting until a bad result was delivered (as, I suspect, it almost certainly would be) would have been wiser.

Of course, your reaction would be identical even if he deliberately and unequivocally took part in a miscarriage of justice.

N.b.: I am unsure, even if given a fuller accounting of the victim's prosecutorial history and a deeper knowledge of Turkey's politics than I have, that I would think this was a defensible action.  But who knows?  As I understand it, Turkey sucks.

[crazy canuck]

Maybe they decided immediate action was necessary.  Maybe the prosecutor gets beefed up security when he declines to charge the officers.  Maybe he's got a history and they didn't like him.  Maybe they didn't care and as a representative of the government, they deemed him a proper target.  None of these things is terribly irrational,

Ide, killing someone as a representative of a government that can be changed through the ballet box is terribly irrational.

[The Brain]

Maybe they decided immediate action was necessary.  Maybe the prosecutor gets beefed up security when he declines to charge the officers.  Maybe he's got a history and they didn't like him.  Maybe they didn't care and as a representative of the government, they deemed him a proper target.  None of these things is terribly irrational,

Ide, killing someone as a representative of a government that can be changed through the ballet box is terribly irrational.