The Turkish police and security forces are known for their brutality towards protestors and activists that they consider anti-state. The past five years of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s regime however have seen a marked increase in the suppression of all voices of dissent. As has become the norm in Turkey, a protest against the government in the summer of 2013 was met by violence by the police, who unleashed a volley of canisters of tear gas upon the peacefully protesting public. Fifteen-year-old Berkin Elvan went into a coma after the injuries he sustained during the police’s attack and passed away in March 2014. All subsequent protests by civil society members about his death were quashed just as aggressively. There was no investigation into the issue, despite vociferous public demands for justice. On Tuesday, two militants of a radical leftist group, the Marxist Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), which has been characterised as a proscribed terrorist organisation by both Turkey and the US, held a high level public prosecutor hostage to force a live confession about the names of the police officials involved in the attack on Elvan. The tragic end to a six hour stand-off between the police and the abductors was that all three people in the courthouse were killed. It is not surprising that both the victim and the two men who were holding him hostage were killed in the incident. As far as hostage situations and related rescue missions go, it is a much better idea to negotiate and calm down the situation rather than enter the building in which the hostage is being held, guns blazing. Police officials asserted that they heard gunfire over their communications with the militants, which influenced their decision to break into the building and open fire. The recent events of police brutality on protests by the blind and farmers against the government’s negligence towards their poor conditions of living and working in Punjab, show that there is not much difference between the Pakistani and Turkish security forces in terms of overreacting to peaceful protests against the unjust policies of the state. It is the responsibility of the leaders of a democratic state to not only facilitate and encourage people to raise their voices regarding the way that their country is being run, but also to address the aggrieved public’s concerns as far as possible. As Elvan’s father put it, “Blood cannot be washed away with blood.” Violence almost always leads to more violence. It is a basic human right for people to be allowed to voice their opinions on public forums and democratic governments must protect that right, not violate it. *