An MP from Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), who was at the centre of an incident that resulted in the murder of three members of a Kurdish family, was excluded in an indictment prepared by the prosecutors more than four years after the killings, Mezopotamya News reported.
The incident started when AKP MP İbrahim Halil Yıldız, along with his relatives and bodyguards, visited a shop that belonged to the Şenyaşar family while canvassing for votes in the Suruç district of the southeastern Şanlıurfa province in the run-up to the 2018 elections.
An argument between the family and the AKP campaign group turned into an armed confrontation that left one of Yıldız’s brothers dead and two members of the Şenyaşar family wounded.
The brothers Adil and Celal Şenyaşar were later brutally murdered by Enver Yıldız, another brother of the MP, at a hospital where they were taken for their injuries. The father Esvet Şenyaşar, a Democratic Regions Party (DBP) official, was also murdered at the hospital. Fadıl Şenyaşar, the third son of the family, who was also wounded, was arrested and later sentenced to 37 years and 9 months imprisonment for killing Yıldız’s brother. Meanwhile, Enver Yıldız from the assailants’ party received a prison sentence of 18 years.
Emine Şenyaşar, who lost her husband and two of her sons in the incident and saw another son jailed as a result of it, started a silent vigil along with her remaining son Ferit Şenyaşar to demand justice in March 2021. The pair, who sit outside the Şanlıurfa courthouse every day, have suffered police violence and faced several investigations and legal trials as a result. The AKP MP has also pressed charges against Emine Şenyaşar for insulting him.
The family demands that all suspects who played a role in the incident be brought to justice, and that Ferit Şenyaşar, who they say acted in self-defence, be released.
Prosecutors had initiated separate investigations into the incident in the shop and the murders at the hospital. The indictment in the events that took place at the hospital was completed this week, but was shared by Turkey’s state news agency before being made available to the Şenyaşar family lawyers.
The prosecutors demanded life sentences for 14 suspects out of the 19 in the indictment, that came more than four years after the deadly event. However, they did not charge the AKP MP Yıldız, who was at the hospital when the murders took place, and his name is mentioned only in the testimonies of witnesses and suspects.
The prosecutors claim that the cameras and the servers that store camera recordings were stolen from Suruç public hospital by five people from Yıldız’s immediate circle. They have demanded a total of 125 years imprisonment for those five people for damaging public property and destroying evidence.
