Much more than just news, it is a sordid and tragic story that has taken on the dimension of a truly national affair. Since the disappearance on August 21 of little Narin Güran, aged 8, and the discovery nineteen days later of her lifeless body, wrapped in a plastic bag submerged in the river of her village, Turkey seems to be gripped by vertigo. Not a week goes by without a new press release from the investigators, not a day without a twist, not a newspaper or newscast without announcing or denouncing the responsibility of one or more culprits.
As soon as the girl was reported missing in her village of Tavsantepe, a 15-minute drive south of Diyarbakir, the regional capital of predominantly Kurdish southeastern Anatolia, police launched a search. Narin was last seen in the afternoon as she returned home after attending a Koranic studies class.
His smiling face quickly spread on social media. Public anger is expressed on the streets of major cities where several demonstrations are taking place.
The debate over the disappearance of children takes a political turn when opposition newspapers recall that the people of Tavsantepe traditionally supports Hüda Par, the Kurdish Islamist party that traces its origins to Turkish Hezbollah (named in opposition to Lebanese Hezbollah, created at the same time, in 1984), an extremist religious group implicated in political assassinations in the 1990s and 2000s, when several of its cells were said to have been active in Tavsantepe. An ally of the government coalition since 2023, Hüda Par is today best known for its violent tirades against women’s rights and gender equality.
New controversies
In the moments after Narin’s body was discovered, two statements followed one another, sparking new controversy. Speaking at the Diyarbakir Institute of Forensic Medicine after visiting the victim’s relatives, Vedat Turgut, a Hüda Par candidate in one of the city’s districts in the March municipal elections, accusingly stated: “This is not our culture, this is the culture of Europe, the United States and Israel.”
On Sözcü TV, Galip Ensarioglu, a local MP from the AKP, the ruling party of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, explained that there was “a forty-year friendship with the family” and so, “Sometimes there are things we don’t know and other times we know them but we shouldn’t say them.” These words, in addition to their intriguing side, raised fears that the authorities were trying to cover up the matter. The elected official later explained that they had not understood him.
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