Background
In summer 2013 the Gezi Park protests that began in Istanbul spread to many cities in Turkey, including Antakya in Hatay province, where demonstrations and police interventions continued for weeks. Ahmet Atakan, a young man reported to have been 22 or 23 (sources differ), died in the city's Armutlu neighbourhood during one of them.
What happened
Atakan died on 10 September 2013 during a police intervention in Armutlu. The gathering was partly a commemoration of another young man who had died during the Gezi protests. His family and eyewitnesses said a gas canister fired by police struck him in the head. Officials said he fell from a rooftop.
Gas canisters found near the scene became central to the case. A gendarmerie criminal report from October 2013 said the substance on the canister was not blood. On 29 November 2018, however, the Forensic Medicine Institute reported that blood on the canisters belonged to Atakan, with a DNA match of 99.99 percent. The same report said his injuries could also have resulted from a fall and that only a judicial investigation could establish whether he had been hit before falling.
After that report the dispute narrowed to a single question: whether a canister struck him. Because the Forensic Medicine Institute said his injuries could also be explained by a fall, a firm answer could only come from a criminal trial weighing witnesses, canisters and footage together, and that stage has never been reached.
Investigation and legal outcome
After the report, the Hatay Chief Prosecutor's Office asked for permission to investigate seven police officers. The governor's office refused, saying the report did not amount to proof, and the family's appeal was rejected by a regional administrative court. The case then went to the Constitutional Court.
According to press reports, the Constitutional Court ruled in 2025 that Atakan's right to life had been violated and awarded the family compensation. The prosecutor's office then treated the death as negligent killing and sent the file to the statute-of-limitations office; no case was opened against any officer. His father criticised the outcome, saying everything had been done to keep the law from working.
The case is often cited in discussions of accountability for deaths during the Gezi protests. Whether a canister struck him has never been tested in a criminal trial.
The family continued to use every legal avenue despite the governor's refusal and the absence of a trial. The Constitutional Court ruling was regarded as significant for the state's duty to investigate deaths effectively.
Because a criminal trial never began, the legal struggle ran mainly through administrative permission and constitutional-appeal routes. The family's demand remains that the case be heard with all its evidence before an independent court.