![\"42169f28b8259e484ef25f6c5ee04893_20130605_zaa_n230_059\"](\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/42169f28b8259e484ef25f6c5ee04893_20130605_zaa_n230_059.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe now iconic picture by Reuters photographer Osman Orsal<\/p>\n
Ceyda Sungur became known in Turkey, and beyond, as the \u201cWoman in Red,\u201d the symbol of the Gezi park protests last year in Istanbul after she was photographed while being teargassed by a police officer. Sungur has avoided publicity and press to this day, having stated that her situation is not unique and she does not want to be in the spotlight. However, Sungur penned an article for the daily\u00a0Radikal\u00a0when the case made the\u00a0news\u00a0after the police officer who gassed her in that famous picture faces trial and possible banning from his profession.<\/p>\n
ISTANBUL\u00a0\u2014\u00a0I did not want to talk until now, in order to not to give shape to the \u201cwoman in red,\u201d change its symbolic value in people’s minds or create an agenda in which individuals come before the struggle itself. But I felt obliged to write the following words; obliged most of all to the families of those who lost their lives at Gezi. The\u00a0recent\u00a0news\u00a0of the charges against the police officer disturbed me greatly.<\/p>\n
Let nobody speak of justice until the murderers of those we have lost at the Gezi resistance and the actual responsible parties are punished! Sending to trial a lone, 23-year-old cop who was acting under the orders of his superiors does not whitewash the oppression of the ruling administration that still claims the police carried out \u201clegendary heroism.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sentence to be given to the officer on trial for spraying gas into my face makes no sense in terms of justice, seeing that none of the complaints of those injured by police violence resulted in court cases in the seven months that have passed since Gezi.<\/p>\n
It is obvious that leaving the court process at this level is nothing more than an attempt to manipulate the effect a symbolic picture that just a red dress left on the world. Trying only the junior police officers, whose working conditions and job security are at the hands of their superiors, will not ease the pain of everybody who died, suffered cerebral hemorrhage, lost their eyes, had legs and arms broken or were hurt in any other way at Gezi \u2014 and it will certainly not ease the pain of the families who lost loved ones, nor those of us who were left alive by chance, too.<\/p>\n
Remember\u00a0their\u00a0names<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, when\u00a0Ethem Sarisuluk\u00a0was shot in the head by a police bullet, when\u00a0Abdullah Comert\u00a0was hit in the head by a gas pellet, when\u00a0Mehmet Ayvalitas\u00a0was crushed while attending the demonstrations, when\u00a0Irfan Tuna\u00a0was gassed while working, when\u00a0Medeni Yildirim\u00a0was protesting the construction of a military post at Lice, when\u00a0Selim Onder\u00a0was visiting his daughter, when\u00a0Zeynep Eryasar\u00a0joined a protest march in solidarity with her children at the Gezi Park, when\u00a0Ahmet Atakan\u00a0demanded the killers to be brought to justice, when\u00a0Ali Ismail Korkmaz\u00a0was beaten to death and when\u00a0Serdar Kadakal\u00a0was sitting at the street across from his workplace; none of them were wearing a red dress.\u00a0Berkin Elvan, our now 15-year-old brother with his beautiful eyes, committed no greater crime than going to the grocery store to buy bread. (He was hit in the head by a gas cannister shot by police, and remains in a coma.)<\/p>\n
The fact that these people were not photographed by chance cannot be an excuse for the parties responsible for what happened to them not to be tried and punished.<\/p>\n
Of course, today, we cannot speak of justice within a system that arrests journalists who defend rights and freedoms, political prisoners, the\u00a0CHD lawyers\u00a0who defend the victims of injustice, the academics who defend free science; just like\u00a0Hrant Dink’s, the activist journalist, whose assassination\u2019s seventh anniversary was this past week. Despite all of what happened to these people, nothing that was experienced will be forgotten \u2014 no one will ever get used to it.<\/p>\n
Justice will be served only by the struggle for human rights, and I believe Berkin will wake up from his coma to help see it happen.<\/p>\n
via Istanbul’s ‘Woman In Red’ Breaks Her Silence – All News Is Global.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ceyda Sungur became the symbol of the Gezi Park protests that shook Turkey because of photograph of a police officer spraying her with gas. That officer now has an unlikely defender. Ceyda Sungur (2014-01-20) SHARE : The now iconic picture by Reuters photographer Osman Orsal Ceyda Sungur became known in Turkey, and beyond, as the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":106553,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[9323],"class_list":["post-106551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-gezi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}