Halim Dener

Halim Dener was a 16-year-old Kurdish boy shot dead by a police officer in Hanover, Germany, on 29 June 1994. The Halim Dener Campaign commemorates the anniversary of his death.

Background Dener was raised in the village of Parçuk near Keklikdere, experiencing the clashes with Turkish authorities who subjected residents to physical abuse, raids, and arbitrary arrest. Dener had been tortured with beatings and falaka in a Turkish military prison and fled his home village before it was destroyed in a tank offensive by the Turkish Armed Forces. At 16, Dener came to Germany as an unaccompanied minor and in early May 1994, he applied for asylum under the name Ayhan Eser. He lived in Neustadt am Rübenberg and integrated into the Kurdish independence movement in Hanover.

Shooting In the late evening of 29 June, Dener and several other Kurds went out to put up posters for the National Liberation Front of Kurdistan (ERNK), an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The PKK had recently been banned in Germany as a terrorist group. At around 23:00, Dener was in the central Steintor pedestrian zone when he encountered several SEK officers. In 2021, 300 people marched in memory of Dener and to protest recent police raids on a Kurdish social centre. As of 2024, despite the wishes of Hanover's city administration and the (KGD), no plans were in place for a memorial plate due to a lack of communication with police and the Turkish community.