Background
Kemal Kılıç was a journalist in Şanlıurfa in the early 1990s and also sat on the board of the Urfa branch of the Human Rights Association (İHD). He ran the local office of the newspaper Özgür Gündem at a time when attacks on people selling and distributing the paper in the region were increasing.
On 23 December 1992 Kılıç sent a press statement to the governor asking for measures to protect his own safety and that of a colleague and the paper's distributor and driver. In a second statement on 11 January 1993 he said attacks on the paper's sellers and distributors were continuing despite urgent requests. These appeals went unanswered, and according to published accounts he was also charged with insulting the governor.
What happened
On the evening of 18 February 1993, as Kılıç was going home from the office, armed men killed him on the road to Külünçe village. Reports say the attackers waited for him along his route.
In later years the pistol used in the killing was found in the possession of a member of an organisation who was being tried in a separate case. Even so, no one was convicted of Kılıç's death.
Investigation and legal proceedings
With no result at home, his family took the case to the European Court of Human Rights, which delivered its judgment in Kılıç v. Turkey on 28 March 2000. The Court found that the authorities knew of a real and immediate risk to his life and did not take reasonable steps to protect him, and that the killing had not been effectively investigated. It held that Article 2 (right to life) and Article 13 (right to an effective remedy) of the Convention had been violated, and ordered compensation to the family.
The judgment became one of the best-known examples of the unresolved killings of journalists in south-east Turkey in the 1990s.
Where it stands today
The perpetrators of Kemal Kılıç's murder have never been identified through the courts. Press freedom groups and professional associations remember him among the journalists killed in the 1990s, and his case is cited as an example of what can follow when journalists' requests for protection are ignored.