Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals has overturned a lower court verdict acquitting a police officer who, along with other police officers and shopkeepers, administered ultimately fatal beatings on university student Ali İsmail Korkmaz in Eskişehir during the Gezi protests of 2013.
The Hürriyet daily on Friday reported the court’s decision recommending up to four-and-a-half years in prison for police officer Hüseyin Engin for the deliberate infliction of injury, sending the case back to the lower court for retrial.
Police officer Engin had received a fine for shutting off the security cameras of a hotel on the street in which Korkmaz was beaten to death.
The court of appeals also denied an acquittal request for convicted police officer Mevlüt Saldoğan in the same case for participating in the savage beating of Gezi protester Korkmaz.
The Gezi protests broke out in İstanbul’s Gezi Park in late May 2013 and spread to all except two provinces in Turkey. Eight civilian protesters were killed during the protests that the then-Erdoğan government called an attempt to undermine the government.