A viral video showing a Turkish policeman putting a gun to the head of a local journalist covering a police raid in Silvan, a city in the Diyarbakir Province of Turkey, has raked up quite some outrage on the social media.
The Turkish special forces members were carrying out a raid on the municipal building in Silvan on Sunday, 4 October when several journalists showed up at the scene. The situation soon went out of hand when the TV news channels started recording the raid. The policemen objected to filming and asked the media to move away. But when one of the journalists questioned why the police were not allowing them to film the situation from a designated zone, an angry policeman charged at the TV news cameraman.
The policeman kept waving his pistol at the journalist, Murat Demir, even though at that point he had stopped filming and had moved away. The video shows the policeman chasing the journalist with his pistol along with another policeman armed with an assault rifle.
Demir then confronts the police again for 'excessive' use of force, but the same policeman puts the barrel of the gun to the head of the journalist. At this point, another policeman comes in and is seen kicking the journalist.
Local reports claim that several journalists were later detained by the police and their cameras were seized.
Watch video of the incident Here
The Turkish security forces have imposed a curfew in the entire Diyarbakir province since 28 September, to hunt down members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is listed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey.
The Turkish forces, however, also have been accused of using excessive forces on local communities, especially the Kurds in the region.
