A Turkish court on Wednesday ordered the arrest of a man who set fire to his own car outside parliament in Ankara, an act that revived memories of unsolved killings from the 1990s and coincided with sensitive hearings on the country’s peace efforts with Kurdish militants.
The vehicle, a white Renault Toros, was torched Tuesday morning at the entrance to parliament, just as a parliamentary commission established to address the aftermath of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) insurgency was about to meet. No one was injured, and firefighters quickly extinguished the blaze.
The Renault Toros was an ordinary family sedan produced in Turkey until 2000, but during the 1990s it became a grim symbol of state-linked abductions in the country’s mainly Kurdish southeast. Witnesses frequently reported victims of enforced disappearances being forced into white Toros cars, which were associated with illegal counterinsurgency units. For many in Turkey, the image of a burning Toros outside parliament carried heavy symbolic weight.
The interior ministry said the suspect, identified only by the initials M.E.F., carried out the act because he was frustrated that a government program to reduce excise taxes on scrap vehicles had not met his expectations. Officials added that he had a criminal record comprising 16 offenses, including theft, forgery, issuing threats and endangering public safety, and that he had previously burned a car in front of a courthouse in 2018.
On Wednesday the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office confirmed that M.E.F. had been arrested on charges of “deliberately endangering public safety” after appearing before the Ankara 3rd Criminal Court of Peace. The statement said the investigation “continues in all its aspects and with due diligence.”
The incident occurred as the parliamentary National Solidarity, Brotherhood and Democracy Commission was holding hearings linked to the PKK’s decision last month to lay down arms after a call from its imprisoned leader Abdullah Öcalan. The PKK, designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies, waged a four-decade insurgency that left more than 40,000 people dead.
Tuesday’s session was devoted to testimony from veterans’ associations and families of soldiers killed in the conflict. On Wednesday the commission is scheduled to hear from relatives of those who disappeared in the 1990s as well as human rights groups, underlining the powerful symbolism of a burning “white Toros” outside parliament.