ISTANBUL - Fince Akman, the mother of Yakup Akman, who was considered the perpetrator of the forest fire reported by the fire brigade and was punished, said: “My son was punished because he is Kurdish. If he was Turkish, they would say 'thank you." 

 

Yakup Akman, who was arrested as the perpetrator despite notifying the fire brigade and the police about the fire that broke out in the Aydos Forest in Pendik, Istanbul, on September 19, 2019, was sentenced to life imprisonment and 25 years in prison on charges of "setting the fire on the instructions of the organization" and "disrupting the unity and territorial integrity of the state" as a result of the trial. was convicted. Even Akman's photograph with a toy gun taken on the set of the TV series in which he acted as an extra was accepted as evidence of a crime. Yakup Akman's mother, Fince Akman, rebelled against the sentence given to her son.

 

Fince Akman is one of the women who previously carried out a "Justice Watch '' protest for their relatives in prison. Fince Akman, who participated in the protest for days to end the violations of rights and the release of ill prisoners and was subjected to police violence, stated that when it comes to Kurds, rights and law disappear.

 

The mother, who said that a person burning a forest would not call the fire brigade to extinguish the fire, explained the approach of the court panel in the hearings as follows: "Judges were looking ahead, not at us, during the hearing, they were not listening. When Yakup and the lawyer talked, they did not want to listen. They also know that my son has nothing to do with it. They did not release him to say 'PKK burned our forests'. We even doubted that the file in front of the judge was Yakup's file."

 

'THE TURKISH STATE WOULD THANK'

 

Stating that this punishment was given to her son only because of his identity, Mother Akman said: “If he was Turkish, he would have said, 'You called us. 'Thank you'  If there were no Kurds, no penalty would be imposed. We know this, too, in the state."

 

Stating that the state has made the Kurds its "enemies", Akman said: "If the life imprisonment is given to someone who is not guilty, how much will the person love the state if he gets out of prison? They create enemies for themselves with their own hands. They are also guilty of those who join the PKK. The Turkish state used violence and burned villages, animals and houses. They don't like the Kurds, they want to end them."

 

Akman said: "The Turkish state threw those people into dungeons in the prime of their lives. The duty of mothers is to take care of their children. Sitting at home and crying doesn't do us any good and saves us, resistance saves us."