Police officer killed in Istanbul amid rising violence against security personnel

A police officer has been killed in clashes with a group of protesters in Istanbul's Gazi neighborhood after days of clashes following the death of a Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) member in a vast anti-terror operation launched last July 24 in Istanbul.

Police officer Muhammet Fatih Sivri was shot in the chest from inside a building on July 26 while he tried to make an arrest during clashes which raged all day, according to Anadolu Agency. Sivri was taken to hospital after the shooting, where he died.

The clashes erupted in Gazi, an Alevi stronghold, when the police moved in after protesters refused to hand over the body of Günay Özarslan, the DHKP-C member killed during Istanbul's vast anti-terror operation, to the municipal authorities for burial, according to Agence France-Presse. The body is being kept in a local Alevi house of worship.

The funeral ceremony for Özarslan has been delayed because the police have not allowed the protesters, whom the Istanbul Governor has accused of making terrorism propaganda, to march during the funeral.

Turkey has recently seen an increase in the number of violent acts against Turkish security forces, police officers in particular, in multiple provinces across the country.

Five police officers were injured late July 26 after gunmen opened fire and threw homemade explosives at a police station in the Nusaybin district of the southeastern province of Mardin.

The police officers, Mustafa Ceylan, Güven Candan, Mustafa Kemal Öztürk, ?brahim Ersoy and Abullah Akbulut, were injured, after unidentified gunmen opened fire at long range and threw homemade explosives at the Nusaybin District Traffic Control Department located on the Silk Road, part of which runs...