<img src="https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/18/0/0/5104/3376/664/0/75/0/ef04c9f_1692340846488-068-aa-12012022-572043.jpg" srcset=" https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/18/0/0/5104/3376/556/0/75/0/ef04c9f_1692340846488-068-aa-12012022-572043.jpg 556w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/18/0/0/5104/3376/600/0/75/0/ef04c9f_1692340846488-068-aa-12012022-572043.jpg 600w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/18/0/0/5104/3376/664/0/75/0/ef04c9f_1692340846488-068-aa-12012022-572043.jpg 664w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/18/0/0/5104/3376/700/0/75/0/ef04c9f_1692340846488-068-aa-12012022-572043.jpg 700w, https://img.lemde.fr/2023/08/18/0/0/5104/3376/800/0/75/0/ef04c9f_1692340846488-068-aa-12012022-572043.jpg 800w" sizes="(min-width: 1024px) 556px, 100vw" alt="In the " disabled="" veterans"="" shooting="" club="" in="" ankara,="" january="" 5,="" 2022."="" width="100%" height="auto">
Sitting in his lawyer's air-conditioned office, 57-year-old Cemil Özgür (name changed at his request) took long puffs of his cigarette. Dressed in a gray-striped polo shirt, this salt-and-pepper-haired public service social worker held out his phone. On the screen appeared the model of a small black pistol: "Look, it was a Belgian-made Browning 9 millimeter. If I hadn't taken it with me, I'd be dead now." Inherited from his father, the weapon – now in the hands of the police – could have earned him a year and a half in prison.
Originally from a small town in eastern Anatolia, he wanted to do a neighbor a favor four years ago and agreed to lend him the sum of €3,000 for a few days. With no news from his debtor for several months, he finally had a heated telephone exchange with the latter's brother, who arranged to meet him in the heart of Ankara in the early evening. A semblance of agreement was reached, but the man made threatening comments over the phone. Worried, Özgür decided to go to the meet-up, gun in hand.
"There were five of them, they pounced on me and I was knocked to the ground. One of them tried to stab me in the chest, but when they saw my gun, they got scared and ran away," recalled the civil servant, still traumatized by the attack. "I'm against violence, but I have to say that guns can be a deterrent," he acknowledged, before turning to his lawyer, Yusuf Dere, to once again express his gratitude.
After four years of proceedings, the lawyer, who specializes in criminal law, succeeded in having self-defense recognized on appeal, sparing his client the prison sentence initially expected. While he welcomed the magistrate's "humane" judgment, he is concerned about the increase in cases of gun violence in the country.
"The problem is that current legislation is not a deterrent at all. The law is very old, and there have been no recent updates to these regulations; it's almost an encouragement to arm oneself. The coup attempt of July 15, 2016, has scared the population. It accelerated the process of individual arming, but the state took no action afterwards to curb the phenomenon," he deplored.
The Turkish press reports daily armed attacks, but the video of the July 29 massacre in Esenyurt, on the outskirts of Istanbul, has reignited the issue of firearms circulation in the country. Filmed by surveillance cameras and widely circulated on social media, the scene is chilling. Four men, looking menacing, entered a store. Within minutes, the situation degenerated into a full-blown brawl. Suddenly, one of the assailants pulled out a pistol, fired several shots at the two people behind the counter and escaped.
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