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Sibel Yiğitalp
“Emine Şenyaşar’s scream is the demand for justice by millions of people. We must stand with her. This is our binding duty as bar associations, human rights activists, political parties and fairminded people around the world.” writes Sibel Yigitalp, People’s Democratic Party’s (HDP) former MP for Diyarbakır (Amed) for Yeni Yaşam.
The Şenyaşar family who has been running a shop in Suruç for more than 30 years, arrived early on the evening of Eid to open their two shops that are run by the Şenyaşar family brothers on the most busy street of Suruç, in Turkey’s souteastern province of Urfa/Riha.
At around 10 o’clock, when the shop was crowded, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) MP İbrahim Halil Yıldız and around 7 people accompanying him entered the shop and asked for a vote from the Şenyaşar family.
Since Suruç is a small district, everybody knows each other. All of the AKP group knew that the Şenyaşar family does not vote for the AKP. Despite that fact, they entered their shop and insisted, asking for votes. Adil and Celal Şenyaşar, who were present in the shop, said that they could not get proper services from the AKP and that some people from the village of the AKP MP Yıldız were involved in many theft and harassment incidents.
They also added that although they have expressed their complaints many times before, they could not get any response. Even the people who were involved in these incidents responded to them saying, “We are from the village of the AKP deputy, no one can touch us.”
When they said that after all of this, they will not vote for the AKP, the bodyguards and relatives of the AKP MP Yıldız attacked Adil and Celal brothers and start firing their guns. The tradesmen and other people who were there moved forwards to stop them, but the AKP MPs guards stopped them.
Fadıl and Ferit Şenyaşar, who heard gunshots from a hundred meters away, ran to their brothers’ shop. On their arrival, the relatives of the AKP MP attacked those two brothers too, and so 4 of the brothers were all injured at the same time, one of the relatives of the AKP MP was also injured.
Adil was injured in his foot and Celal from his neck and they were taken to the hospital.
Meanwhile, there is another AKP MP, a police director, and a lot of bodyguards at the same hospital due to an opening in the hospital. And at that time, despite all the bodyguards, despite the police being present in the hospital, the two brothers Adil and Celal were attacked again by the relatives of the AKP MP İbrahim Halil Yıldız who came to the hospital and they were murdered, there in the hospital where they were supposed to be being treated.
While the other two injured brothers were taken to Suruç State Hospital by ambulance, the ambulance driver learned about the incident in the other hospital and tried to escape before entering the accident and emergency department, fearing that the two injured brothers would also be killed. With this fear the driver left the two wounded brothers to Antep Hospital in another emergency vehicle.
The last wounded brother, Fadıl Şenyaşar, was taken to Diyarbakır Training and Research Hospital by his uncle.
Father Esvet Şenyaşar and mother Emine Şenyaşar, who received the terrible news went to the hospital. The relatives of AKP MP Yıldız, who learned that the family is on the way, waited for them in front of the hospital door, and with the arrival of the family, the father Esvet Şenyaşar was struck on the head with serum bottles and metal oxygen bottles by the bodyguards of the AKP MP Yıldız and was seriously wounded.
During the funearl of her two sons, Emine Şenyaşar, learned that her husband too had also died.
“Adil Şenyaşar was beaten with sharp objects in 14 different regions of his body, 5 of the bullets that hit him were lethal. Celal Şenyaşar was killed with 6 different weapons at close range, Esvet Şenyaşar had stab wounds made by sharp objects on 7 vital parts of his body,” the official autopsy report stated.
Although all incidents took place in a public place, no camera footage, including inside the hospital and in front of the emergency room, could be accessed because they all had been “deleted”.
Only one member of the Yıldız Family was arrested 15 months after this massacre.
Her husband and children were killed at a hospital, a place that is protected even in war zones. It happened in front of a deputy of the Turkish parliament and tens of bodyguards.
What more horrendous things could have been done to a mother, to a woman, to a person!
Emine Şenyaşar is now fighting for justice alone.
Sitting on the stairs of the courthouse day and night, her screams of pain can be heard.
And she experiences the worst loneliness and grief on earth.
She screams for justice. “They murdered my children, murdered my husband,” she shouts that “they smashed my husband’s head with serum bottles and oxygen bottles in a hospital on the day of Eid.”
She demands justice!
On top of all these losses, she is waiting for her son, who has been in prison for 4 years.
We are passing through such dark days that no one cares about, ‘the truth’ but it is only who has power that matters. It is time for all of us to stand together against this tyranny and savagery, to stand side by side for justice.
Emine Şenyaşar’s scream is the demand for justice by millions of people. However, we should know very well by now that the way to survive against such pain and injustice is to unite millions whose hearts are full of hope, who have not lost their conscience, and whose hearts are still beating for humanity. This is our binding duty as bar associations, human rights activists, political parties and fair minded people.
Sibel Yiğitalp is the 25th and 26th parliamentary term HDP MP for Diyarbakır (Amed) in Turkey.
