First published December 8, 2020.
Two cases, two outcomes: the officer and the photographer
The shooting case and the proceedings against the photographer are separate legal records. An acquittal, release from custody, requested maximum sentence and imposed sentence are different outcomes, so each is dated below.
The photographer. Gök said at the time that he faced up to 20 years in prison on terrorism charges based on phone conversations with colleagues and his reporting, which he said had nothing to do with Kurkut’s death. On June 30, 2022 the Diyarbakır 5th Heavy Penal Court acquitted him of membership of an illegal organisation but sentenced him to 1 year, 6 months and 22 days for “propagandising for a terrorist organisation”; his reports on the 2014 siege of Kobanî were among the material cited. A regional appeals court upheld the conviction, and his lawyer said they would take the case to the Court of Cassation. (Update, October 2026: as of October 2025 the propaganda conviction was still under review at the Court of Cassation, and Gök faced a fourth terrorism indictment, alleging membership of the PKK, which prosecutors in Diyarbakır filed and which was merged with an ongoing case (Stockholm Center for Freedom, 10 October 2025).) Gök has said he believes the prosecution is retaliation for the photographs, which refuted the Diyarbakır governor’s office’s claim that Kurkut had been shot on suspicion of wearing a suicide vest.
Photographs by Abdurrahman Gök record the 2017 police shooting of 23-year-old university student Kemal Kurkut in Diyarbakır. When this article was published, Gök was on trial and facing a possible 20-year sentence — not for taking the photographs, as first stated here, but on terrorism-related charges (see the outcomes above).
The Turkish police officer who shot dead the young Kurdish man walked free from court after proceedings lasting more than three years, while the photographer who captured the killing was himself facing charges. As first reported here, prosecutors were said to be seeking 20 years for releasing the photographs; in fact the indictment concerned terrorism-related charges, which Gök and press-freedom groups saw as retaliation for the photographs.
The shooting happened during the Kurdish celebration of Newroz in which Kurds celebrate their culture and the coming of Spring. Kurkut was shot after he attempted to pass a police checkpoint to a city-square. He lifted up his shirt to show that he was unarmed but was gunned down by the law-enforcement official.
The Newroz that Kurkut attended was the first that had been legally permitted since the attempted coup against the Turkish government in 2016. Eye-witnesses say that he was harassed by the police and became seriously upset and frustrated.
A lawyer for Kurkut's family says that if Gok had not captured the photographs, then the Turkish authorities would have covered up the circumstances surrounding the killing. Before Gok released his photographs, Turkish state security forces had already claimed that they had 'eliminated a potential suicide bomber. Gok was apprehended at the scene and video evidence he had recorded was destroyed by the police. He was, however, able to hide the memory card with the now published photographs on them.
An attorney for Kurkut's family said of the incident:
"It is a crime to destroy evidence. If government officials fail to disclose all the documents to the courts, the fines are even higher. The evidence here is abundant and with Gok's photos, it is public. But we are still trying to prove Kemal was murdered."
Kurkut had been involved in the Gezi protests, in which many Turkish citizens, including Kurds, protested against the government and demanded wider rights. (This article first placed them in 2014 at a “Gezi Square” in Ankara; the protest wave began in 2013 around Gezi Park in Istanbul.) His brother’s recollection below describes what that period meant to him.
Kurkut’s brother, Ercan Kurkut, told Al-Monitor:
"We lost our dad when Kemal was only 6 years old. As a family, we centred our love and affection on our 'delalê male' [a Kurdish term of endearment for the youngest of the family meaning source of joy]. Kemal was 19 years old during the Gezi uprising. When he heard the piano recitals at Gezi Park, he decided to go back to college to pursue his passion, music. Gezi was the also first occasion when Kemal heard the cops asking people, 'Where are the Kurds?"
The case sits within a longer history of tension between the Turkish state and its Kurdish population. This article originally added that Kurds have long faced discrimination and that many in the south-east have fought for a separate nation; that is a broad generalisation — Kurdish political demands range from cultural and political rights to autonomy — and it is kept here only as the article’s framing, not as a statement about all Kurds. (Kurdish movements in Turkey have included peaceful campaigns for basic civil rights as well as armed struggle, first for a separate Kurdish state and later for self-determination; Kurdish was banned from public and private life after the 1980 coup, and in one survey 59% of self-identified Kurds in Turkey said Kurds there do not seek a separate state (Kurds in Turkey, Wikipedia).)
Photographs as evidence, courts as the record
The photographs have a role as a record of an event, while court documents determine what was charged, argued and decided in each proceeding. A press-freedom organization may offer a further assessment of why a prosecution matters. Those sources can complement one another without being interchangeable. The outcome of any appeal to the Court of Cassation was not found in the sources checked; the account above runs to early 2023. (Update, October 2026: no ruling had been reported by October 2025, when the case was still before the Court of Cassation (Stockholm Center for Freedom, 10 October 2025).)
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