Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the presidential candidate of the opposition six party Nation Alliance for the 14 May elections, said on Friday that people in Turkey should reflect on the injustice Emine Şenyaşar has been facing for five years.
Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), recalled the tragedy of Şenyaşar, who lost her husband and two sons in 2018 after an attack by gunmen related to an MP from Turkey’s ruling party in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa (Riha).
“She does not know Turkish, I went beside her, she started telling me her troubles, but there was an interpreter in between,” Kılıçdarğlu said during a meeting with Turkey’s former Minister of Justice.
“The prosecutor of the case has changed eight times. The prosecutors are afraid of opening a lawsuit. Because the killers are powerful,” the politician said.
“Do we know about the tragedy of this mother,” Kılıçdaroğlu asked. “How many of us objected it, how many of us said this was not right,” he continued.
“I have never thought about who this mother votes for, it has never crossed my mind. But we have to think about the injustice she has faced,” he said.
Bodyguards and relatives of a lawmaker from Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) attacked Şenyaşar family members, injuring five, at their shop premises in the Suruç (Pirsûs) district of Şanlıurfa right before the 2018 elections. The father, Hacı Esvet, and his two sons, Adil and Celal, were later murdered in hospital while receiving treatment after the initial attack.
The case is divided into two parts, a file covering the attacks at the family’s shop, and a separate file covering the fatal attack at the hospital, known as the “hospital massacre”.
No one was detained in relation to the incident until April 2022, and the hospital’s security camera recordings were not released, nor were the defendants identified, according to the Şenyaşar family’s lawyer. The first hearing of the case began this year, on 17 January, and the hospital and shop files were combined in February.
İbrahim Yıldız, who caused the death of Adil and Celal but could not be caught for five years despite an arrest warrant, died in a private hospital this month where he had surgery in the southern province of Mersin.
Ferit Şenyaşar, the family’s one of the remaining sons, applied this month to the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) to become a parliamentary candidate in the 14 May general elections.
