Green Left Party (YSP) MP Ferit Şenyaşar and his mother Emine Şenyaşar were turned away at the door of the Turkish Justice Ministry on Wednesday, when they requested an audience with the authorities over the death of three members of the Kurdish family.
Hacı Şenyaşar and his two sons, Adil and Celal, were killed after relatives of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) MP İbrahim Halil Yıldız opened fire on the family shop in Suruç, Şanlıurfa (Pirsûs, Riha) ahead of the 2018 elections.
The three men were hospitalised after the attack, and died after Yıldız’s relatives opened fire in the emergency room once again. Yıldız’s brother Mehmet Şah also lost his life at the shop shooting.
After losing two brothers and his father, son Fadıl Şenyaşar was arrested and sentenced to 37 years in prison over the death of Mehmet Şah Yıldız. Another relative of the AKP MP, Enver Yıldız, was sentenced to 18 years in prison over the death of the three Şenyaşars, enjoying a reduced sentence due to his crime being committed under what the court called “unjust provocation”.
Mother Emine Şenyaşar’s search for justice started with her son Fadıl’s arrest, in the form of a vigil in front of the Şanlıurfa courthouse. Honouring the family’s quest, the YSP fielded Ferit Şenyaşar as a parliamentary candidate from their hometown, and he was elected in May.
With Ferit Şenyaşar’s election and a court in neighbouring Malatya rejecting the family’s appeal for Fadıl Şenyaşar’s release despite five years behind bars without a finalised conviction, Emine Şenyaşar took her fight to the capital. She has been holding her justice vigil in front of the parliament since mid-July.
After they were not allowed into the Justice Ministry on Wednesday, Emine and Ferit Şenyaşar went back to parliament to continue the vigil there.
At the time of the incident, then-Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu had said the Şenyaşars were the aggressors and that the incident had been “previously fabricated”, then-Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım accused Şenyaşar family members of terrorist sympathies, and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan himself said the incident was proof that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) “cannot let go of a growth strategy based on feeding on the blood of Kurds”.
