Biography
Date of birth: 16.09.1997. She was born in the village of Şenlik in Lice district of Diyarbakır, Southeastern Turkey. She was the daughter of a family of 2 girls and 4 boys.
Place
Lice district of Diyarbakır, Southeastern Turkey
Date
28.09.2009
Incident content
On 28.09.2009, Ceylan Önkol was only 12 years old and a primary school student when she lost her life. Mother Saliha Önkol states that at around 11 o’clock on September 28, 2009, her daughter Ceylan went out to graze the animals after saying “Mom cook me pasta”, and they heard a humming sound and then a big explosion shortly after she went out. After the explosion sound, son Raif and other villagers in the house run to the place of the explosion and they encountered the shattered body of Ceylan at the site of the explosion. She died due to a mortar shell shot from Tabantepe police station, 200 meters from their home. After the incident, the prosecutor was informed, but the Lice Public Prosecutor did not go to the scene on the grounds because the incident was “in a terrorist zone” and ordered the villagers to take the body and bring it to the nearest Abalı Gendarme Station. Saliha Önkol had to collect the parts of her body by herself. She says that she had to collect the parts of her daughter’s body on her skirt and take them to the prosecutor. Upon the public reflection of the incident and the reactions, the prosecutor went to the scene by helicopter three days later.
Current legal situation
In line with the reactions to the incident, he later brought a confidentiality order to the file. Serdar Çelebi, one of the IHD Lawyers, said, “The feet and legs of Önkol’s body were intact. There was no hole in the ground either. This eliminates the possibility of a mine. ”Ceylan stated that in the case of the death of Önkol, there is a possibility of having been targeted.
Kocaeli University Faculty of Medicine, Forensic Medicine specialist Prof Dr. Ümit Bicer stated in the independent report, that that Ceylan Önkol died in “defensive position”. Lawyers stated that this determination strengthened the allegations that Ceylan was shot from the gendarmerie battalion from the hamlet where she died.
