A young man of Kurdish ethnicity was stabbed to death by a group of nationalists in İstanbul’s Kağıthane district on Monday night, and his relatives have claimed the attack was racially motivated, the Evrensel daily reported.

Sedat Akbaş was reportedly attacked by a group of six nationalists near a coffee house in Kağıthane that allegedly belongs to a citizen who reportedly considers himself a nationalist. After noticing that Akbaş was talking on the phone in Kurdish, the group verbally insulted him with racial slurs before stabbing him to death. The 21-year-old man was taken by ambulance to the Okmeydanı Teaching and Research Hospital where he later succumbed to his injuries. A police investigation was immediately launched to capture the assailants.

Speaking to Evrensel, Suat Akbaş, a relative of Sedat, said the police told him they had already caught some of the assailants who confessed that they killed Akbaş because of his Kurdish ethnicity. “They killed him because they heard him speaking in Kurdish on the phone,” Suat Akbaş stated.

However, the İstanbul Police Department released a written statement early on Tuesday in which it claimed that Akbaş was killed not because he was speaking on the phone in Kurdish but in a skirmish that erupted after he attacked a group of people. The police department also added that Akbaş was drunk.

Sedat reportedly leaves behind a daughter and newly pregnant wife.

This is not the first time that a man of Kurdish origin has been beaten to death by nationalists in the past 12 months. Another ethnic Kurd, Mahir Çetin, died as a result of head injuries after being set upon by a group of 20-30 young men from Turkey’s ultranationalist Ülkücü (Idealist) movement in Antalya’s Kaş district on Sept. 3, 2014.

Vedat Çetin, Çetin’s cousin, who was seriously wounded during the incident, told police that the group insulted them using racist slurs and then physically assaulted them. Mahir Çetin died in the hospital after suffering a brain hemorrhage and was buried by his family on Sept. 5 in a funeral ceremony held in Batman’s Sinan village.

Source: Zaman