A worrying racist attack sparking outrage in Turkey

A mob of 20 to 25 people attacked a burial ceremony in a public cemetery in the Gölbaşı district of the Turkish capital Ankara on Sept. 13 when the body of Hatun Tuğluk was being lowered into her grave, according to eyewitness reports. Shouting slogans of not wanting the body of a terrorist buried in the cemetery, they attacked the people who were there for the funeral. Following a jostling between the attackers and those holding the funeral, the family decided to pull the body back from the grave and move it to bury it in her hometown province of Tunceli, in the east of Turkey. The body was buried at last in peace in Tunceli on Sept. 14.

Hatun Tuğluk was the mother of Aysel Tuğluk, a member of the Turkish parliament from the Kurdish problem-focused Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) who is currently under arrest on accusations of helping terrorists along with nine other HDP deputies, including the party's co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş. She was released on a special permission from authorities for a day to attend the funeral and was there when the mob attacked her mother's funeral.

Osman Baydemir, a spokesman for the HDP, said it was a "fascist" and "racist" mob that was there with the purpose of preventing the burial. "They threatened the family by saying they would take the deceased body out of the grave by force and throw it away to a dump," Baydemir said. "They even kicked the dead body," he added, accusing the security forces of intervening late and the governor of Ankara for trying to downplay the outrageous attack. Baydemir demanded the government to bring the attackers to court and called on all "democratic forces" to stand against it.

Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu arrived in the scene soon after, but the family had already decided...