Emine Şenyaşar released from hospital

Emine Şenyaşar, who has been demanding justice for years for the murder of her sons by bodyguards of an AKP politician and an AKP lynch mob, collapsed and had to be hospitalized.

Emine Şenyaşar is the mirror of Kurdish reality. Suffering and the spirit of resistance come together in one person. For years, Şenyaşar has been holding sit-ins and other forms of permanent protest to demand justice for her family. On Thursday, after a police attack, Şenyaşar collapsed and had to be hospitalized. When she tried to walk from her permanent protest in front of the Ministry of Justice to the building where the DEM party faction is located, she was stopped by the police. She immediately sat down in protest. She sang lamentations for her murdered relatives, and suddenly she fainted. Parliamentary staff came to her aid.

Şenyaşar was hospitalized with an acute nervous breakdown. She was released after being treated with blood pressure medication.

The massacre of the Şenyaşar family

Ten days before the parliamentary and presidential elections on 24 June 2018, AKP candidate Ibrahim Halil Yıldız visited the Şenyaşar family business in the center of Suruç (Pirsûs) in Urfa (Riha) accompanied by bodyguards and relatives. It was the second "visit" within a few days. The aim was to put more pressure on the extended family than before and force them to vote for the AKP. After a short discussion, a verbal argument ensued, which culminated in a shootout.

Surveillance cameras captured Yıldız's armed companions attacking the shop owners with knives, sticks, pistols and long guns. Celal and Adil Şenyaşar, as well as Mehmet Şah Yıldız, one of the attackers, collapsed in the store, covered in blood, with stab and gunshot wounds. Ferit and Fadıl Şenyaşar were also injured. Celal and Adil were taken to the state hospital in Suruç together with Ferit Şenyaşar. Fadıl Şenyaşar was first taken to the Balıklıgöl Hospital in the provincial capital Urfa before being taken to a hospital in Amed (Diyarbakır).

Mehmet Şenyaşar, another sibling who was not in the store at the time of the attack, later stated that he found his brothers bleeding to death at the scene and that he went to the hospital in Suruç with Celal and Adil immediately after the ambulance left. The parents, Emine and Hacı Esvet Şenyaşar, who had meanwhile been informed of the attack, rushed to the same hospital on foot. But Ibrahim Halil Yıldız's followers arrived at the clinic before the Şenyaşars, and Mehmet Şah Yıldız was pronounced dead shortly afterward. The AKP politician stormed the emergency room when Celal and Adil Şenyaşar were admitted there. The mob first destroyed the surveillance cameras before the two brothers were brutally murdered in front of the attending health staff.

Seventeen bullets on Adil

During Celal's autopsy, the forensic medicine department found bullets from at least six firearms of different calibres. During the examination of his brother Adil, cuts and stab wounds as well as blows with hard objects were found in 14 places on his body. The report states that Adil had been subjected to "extreme violence". Seventeen bullets of different calibres were found in his body. Five of these were fatal. Only two of the bullets were not fired from close range, but in the shop.

Mehmet Şenyaşar was intercepted by the AKP mob in the entrance hall of the clinic and dragged into a room. There, the attackers beat and kicked him until he lost consciousness. When he came to on a stretcher, he witnessed his brother Ferit, who was lying right next to him, being injured with a knife.

Staff and police then took the two seriously injured people to a shelter, but here the mob attacked again. "A relative of Yıldız kicked in the door and fired a shot at me. Others turned to Ferit and beat him with their fists, even though he was already unconscious. I had no choice but to play dead. The police officers were petrified with fear because they were afraid of the MP and his people," Mehmet Şenyaşar later said in an interview.