5 years ago today, the 2.5 year-long peace process between the Turkish state & the PKK ended.

Since then, tens of thousands have been killed & hundreds of thousands displaced.

The trigger was the unresolved and now unravelling assassination of 2 police officers [THREAD]

On the morning of 22 July 2015, officers in #Ceylanpınar police station, a town in Southeastern Turkey bordering Syria, grew suspicious after 2 of their colleagues who lived together didn't turn up to work. The officers went to their house but nobody answered the door.

When they entered with the help of a locksmith, they found their colleagues shot dead.

At around 11:00 am the news broke.

At 13:50, the PKK posted a press release endorsing the killings as a revenge for the ISIS #Suruç bombing which happened 2 days before in the same province.

Soon after, the #Turkish military bombed PKK positions in Qandil mountains in Iraqi #Kurdistan effectively ending the peace process.

A few days later, PKK released another statement saying they weren't involved in the killing. But, both sides continued the now reignited conflict

The assassination of the police officers came at a volatile moment — tensions between the PKK & the Turkish gov were at an all-time high. It was 2 days after #ISIS attacked students in Suruç, where several gross and suspicious negligences by the gov security forces were reported.

On the same day, while the forensics were still at the crime scene, 4 young men, affiliated with the #HDP, were stopped in a routine traffic check. There was an issue with their car's paperwork so on their suggestion, they went to the police station to resolve it.

While they waited at the police station, someone called the police saying that he wanted to give the names of those responsible for killing the officers. Claiming he was calling because he was feeling guilty, he gave the names of the 4 men stopped at the traffic check.

The men were arrested instantly, moved to the anti-terror unit and charged with the killing. No one investigated the caller despite having access to this information.

The arrested men were tortured as the police tried to get a confession from them, but they refused.

The following day another unidentified caller phoned and gave more information on the killings repeating the names of the 4 accused men as well as offering extensive details on how the killings were allegedly planned.

This time, this caller's number was discoverable and registered to a name. Despite this and despite claiming to have extraordinary details on the killings, the investigators made no attempt to find out who the caller was, simply taking their claims at face value.

The prosecutor proceeded to base his entire case against the 4 men on the claims made by covert callers while remaining uninterested in who the callers were.

The SIM card used to make the second call was registered to a man affiliated with the Gülenist community in Ceylanpınar.

The prosecutor also ignored the conflicting statements given by the police officers who took part in the early investigations including those who did the forensics which substantially differed from the statements given by local witnesses.

The most striking detail the prosecutor chose to ignore was the fingerprints found at the crime scene which belonged to a police officer who claimed in his witness statement to never have been to the house where the killings took place.

This officer, whose fingerprints were found in the crime scene, was never questioned by the prosecutor as a suspect and even more strangely, his statement was not included in the case for 2 years until the defence asked about it.

These are only a fraction of the baffling irregularities that the case is filled with, indicating there were extensive efforts to hamper the evidence and protect the real perpetrators who evidently had extensive reach within both the law enforcement as well as the judiciary.

Many of the police officers who took part in the investigation including the judge and the prosecutors who oversaw the autopsy were arrested or expelled on suspicions of ties with the #Gülen Movement.

All 4 men were acquitted after undergoing torture and 3 years in prison.

Despite the documented misconduct on the case and the catastrophic impact the assassinations had for #Turkey and the region, there is still no investigation on the killing of 2 police officers in Ceylanpınar except the now refuted one in which all suspects have been acquitted.

The Turkish government has thousands of investigations on the Gülen movement but none include this case where Gülenists are serious suspects.

The defendants' lawyers asked the court several times to investigate Gülenist role in the killings but their calls have been ignored.

There are still many grey areas and questions to be answered but what we know for certain is that whoever committed these murders, exactly 5 years ago, is still out there, and they managed to reignite a conflict that has inflicted immeasurable suffering.