What began as a tragic and appalling news item has become a national outcry. Since the disappearance of 8-year-old Narin Güran on August 21, and the discovery 10 days later of her lifeless body, wrapped in a plastic bag submerged in her village river, Turkey has been on an emotional roller coaster. Each week brings updates from investigators, each day a new twist. No newspaper or news broadcast is without reports or condemnations, as the search for those responsible continues to dominate headlines.

When police were alerted to the disappearance of the little girl from her village of Tavsantepe − a 15-minute drive south of Diyarbakir, the regional capital of the predominantly Kurdish southeast of Anatolia − they immediately launched a search. Narin had last been seen in the afternoon on her way home from a Quran study class.

Her smiling face was soon all over social media. Public anger was vented in the streets of major cities, where numerous demonstrations took place.

The debate over the disappearances of children took a political turn when opposition dailies pointed out that the village of Tavsantepe has traditionally supported Hüda Par, the Kurdish Islamic party whose origins can be traced back to the Turkish Hezbollah (so-named to distinguish it from Lebanese Hezbollah, created during the same period, in 1984), a religious extremist group implicated in political assassinations in the 1990s and 2000s. Several of its cells are said to have been active in Tavsantepe. An ally of the coalition government since 2023, Hüda Par is today best known for its violent diatribes against women's rights and gender equality.

In the moments following the discovery of Narin's body, two consecutive statements sparked new controversies. Speaking in front of Diyarbakir's Institute of Forensic Medicine, after meeting with the victim's relatives, Vedat Turgut, Hüda Par candidate in one of the city's districts in the March municipal elections, pointed his finger elsewhere: "This is not our culture, this is the culture of Europe, America and Israel."

Speaking on Sözcü TV, Galip Ensarioglu, a local MP for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling AKP party, said that he'd had "a 40-year friendship with the family" and that, "sometimes there are things we don't know, and sometimes we know, but we shouldn't tell." These words, apart from stoking intrigue, raised fears that the authorities were trying to hush up the affair. The politician later explained that his words had been misunderstood.

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