Murder of young girl underscores authorities' silence on child disappearance

What began as tragic and horrifying news has become a national outcry. Since the disappearance of 8-year-old Narin Güran on August 21 and the discovery of her lifeless body wrapped in a plastic bag in her village's river ten days later, Turkey has been on an emotional rollercoaster. Every week there is news from investigators, every day a new twist. No newspaper or newscast is without reports or convictions, as the search for those responsible continues to dominate the headlines.

When police were informed of the little girl's disappearance from her village of Tavsantepe – a 15-minute drive south of Diyarbakir, the regional capital of predominantly Kurdish southeastern Anatolia – they immediately launched a search. Narin was last seen in the afternoon on her way home from a Koran course.

Her smiling face was soon seen all over social media. Public anger found its way onto the streets of major cities, where numerous demonstrations took place.

The debate over the disappearance of children took a political turn when opposition newspapers pointed out that the village Tavsantepe traditionally supports Hüda Par, the Kurdish Islamic party whose origins can be traced back to Turkey's Hezbollah (so named to distinguish it from Lebanon's Hezbollah, which was founded in the same period, in 1984), a religious extremist group that was involved in political assassinations in the 1990s and 2000s. Several of its cells are said to have been active in Tavsantepe. Hüda Par has been an ally of the coalition government since 2023 and is now best known for its violent tirades against women's rights and gender equality.

New controversy

Shortly after the discovery of Narin's body, two consecutive statements sparked new controversy. Vedat Turgut, Hüda Par candidate in one of the city's districts in the local elections in March, spoke at the Institute of Legal Medicine in Diyarbakir and, after meeting with the victim's relatives, pointed the finger at others: “This is not our culture, this is the culture of Europe, America and Israel.”

Galip Ensarioglu, a local MP from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling AKP party, told Sözcü TV that he had “a 40-year friendship with the family” and that “sometimes there are things we don't know, and sometimes we know them but we shouldn't tell them.” These words not only fueled intrigue, but also raised fears that the authorities were trying to cover up the affair. The politician later said his words had been misunderstood.

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