Funeral services for a dead terrorist; villagers stone bus ridden by TAYAD group

Funeral services were held yesterday in Ardahan for Eyup Beyaz, who died on Friday afternoon in Ankara when he blew himself up in front of the Justice Ministry. Beyaz's parents expressed sorrow and regret that their son become a terrorist, his mother blaming the city where her son went to school for corrupting him: "My son was destroyed by Giresun (a large city in Turkey). If he had not gone to school there, he wouldn't have joined this terrorist group, and then he would have lived." Interestingly, a group of 40 or so members of TAYAD, the Organization of Solidarity for Prisoners' Relatives, followed the village funeral procession for Beyaz, waiting until his body had been lowered into the ground before receiving permission to go to the cemetary afterwards and leave flowers by his grave. When the TAYAD group left the village, a group of angry villagers gathered to stone their bus, even breaking some of the bus windows with the force of the stones. TAYAD members said that the local gendarme had provoked the villagers into anger with them, and that they would investigate claims made by the gendarme.Â