Background
Kemal Türkler was one of the leading figures of Turkey's trade-union movement. He was among the founders of DİSK, the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions, established in 1967, and at the time of the attack he headed the Maden-İş mineworkers' union. He is remembered as a symbolic name in the history of Turkey's labour movement.
The late 1970s and early 1980 were a time when political violence and pre-coup tension in Turkey reached a peak, and trade unionists, academics and journalists were frequent targets.
In the 1970s, as strikes and union organisation spread, Türkler became the public face of DİSK. Because of the unions' role in political debate, he had both supporters and opponents.
What happened
On 22 July 1980 Türkler was shot and killed as he was getting into his car in front of his home in the Merter district of Istanbul. A police bodyguard was with him at the time.
The killing came about two months before the 12 September 1980 coup, in the days when tension in the country was at its height, and was regarded as a heavy loss for the labour movement.
After the killing, DİSK described the attack as a political assassination, and unions and political circles across the country reacted.
Investigation and trial
In the trials that followed the coup, two men were tried before a military court in connection with the killing and were sentenced as accomplices. The person who actually carried out the shooting was not identified for a long time. In a case reopened in Bakırköy in 2009, Ünal Osmanağaoğlu stood trial as a defendant, a process set in motion by the testimony of Türkler's family.
The court acquitted the defendant several times and the Court of Cassation repeatedly overturned those rulings. Finally, on 1 December 2010, the Bakırköy court dropped the case under the statute of limitations because 30 years had passed. No one was convicted of the killing. The Council of State later recognised the state's responsibility for the delays and ordered compensation for the family.
The family argued that the investigation had been neglected for a long time, and the Council of State's compensation ruling was seen as legal support for that claim. Still, the criminal proceedings ended without any conviction.
Legacy
Kemal Türkler is commemorated each year on 22 July by DİSK and the unions. The killing is remembered as one of the best-known examples in the debate over limitation periods for political murders, and DİSK and his family argue that the case was deliberately allowed to run out of time.