Turkey buries 'daughter' killed in West Bank

The funeral of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a Turkish-American activist killed on September 6 in West Bank, are celebrated Saturday in Turkey with the will to make it a symbol of his commitment to the Palestinian cause.

At the end of the morning, the large crowd awaited the arrival of the coffin in front of the small mosque in Didim, hung with Turkish flags and protected by a large security force, chanting slogans hostile to Israel and the United States: “the Palestinian people are not alone.”

As soon as her death was announced, Ankara, which opened an investigation, strongly denounced this “arbitrary assassination” attributed to the Israeli army: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan assured that his country would do everything “so that the death of our daughter, Aysenur Ezgi, does not go unpunished”.

The 26-year-old woman, who arrived in the United States at the age of ten months with her family, is to be buried early this afternoon in the cemetery of Didim (southwest), on the Aegean coast, where her relatives live and where her parents and her partner who live in the United States have arrived.

Representatives of the main parties, the ruling AKP and the opposition, made the trip as well as activists from Turkey's main Islamic NGO, the IHH.

Funeral prayer in front of the Fatih Grand Mosque for the American-Turkish activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, killed during a demonstration in the West Bank, on September 13, 2024 in Istanbul, Turkey © AFP – Yasin AKGUL

The burial is scheduled after the midday prayer celebrated from 1:15 p.m. local time (10:15 GMT).

The young woman's body arrived in Turkey on Friday and was taken to Izmir (west), the country's third city on the western coast, where a new autopsy confirmed her death by “firearm”, reported public television TRT.

TRT noted that these conclusions “correspond” to those of the three Palestinian doctors who ruled out the hypothesis of an indirect shot.

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These results will be attached to the report of the investigation opened by the prosecutor of Ankara, indicated the Minister of Justice Yilmaz Tunç.

The young activist was greeted on her arrival in Istanbul by the Turkish army's guard of honour reserved for martyrs and by officials.

– “a very special person” –

An activist with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), Aysenur Eygi was killed while participating in a demonstration in the northern occupied West Bank, near Nablus.

The Israeli army considered it “highly probable” that gunfire from its ranks killed the young woman “indirectly and unintentionally”.

Mehmet Suat Eygi, the father of Turkish-American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, during a funeral ceremony in Didim, Aydin province, on September 13, 2024 in Turkey © AFP – Ozan KOSE

“Aysenur received an excellent education in the United States, she was married, financially comfortable, she left everything behind to defend her ideals,” recalled her grieving father, Mehmet Suat Eygi, on Friday, in front of the family home in Didim where the young graduate of the University of Washington regularly stayed on vacation.

M. Eygi welcomed the opening of an investigation by the Turkish authorities and called on the United States, his daughter's other country, to do the same: “I expect the same from the American government, because Aysenur was only ten months old when she arrived in the United States,” he said.

“The only thing I ask of the state is to demand justice for my daughter. That (her) blood be avenged. That those responsible be punished because she was deliberately targeted,” accused her mother, Rabia Birden, quoted by the Anadolu agency.

Turkey is considering issuing international arrest warrants, depending on the results of its investigation.

The minister also called the UN special rapporteur on executions extrajudicial and arbitrary to establish an independent commission of inquiry and to draft a report on the death of Ms. Eygi with the intention of joining it to the ongoing “genocide” proceedings against Israel before the International Court of Justice and in the investigation also underway before the International Criminal Court.

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