'Prosecutor relocated after saying, "Heads will roll"'

Click to read the article in Turkish / Kurdish

Emine Şenyaşar lost her spouse and two sons in an attack by the security guards and relatives of İbrahim Halil Yıldız from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Urfa. She and her son Ferit Şenyaşar, who survived the attack, have been demanding justice for 185 days.

They have been keeping a justice watch in front of the Urfa Courthouse in southeast Turkey for six months now.

Every morning, Emine Şenyaşar, together with her son Ferit Şenyaşar, comes from Suruç district to central Urfa.

In the heat of Urfa, which is sometimes as high as 41 degrees even in September, Emine and Ferit Şenyaşar sit a few yards away from the "justice" building as they are not allowed to approach its gate.

When the courthouse opens in the morning, their shift of "justice" begins as well. They leave their station of justice at 5 in the evening.

'Release my son, let us go home'

They insist on justice, only justice...

"Our life has fallen apart; our house, our home has fallen apart," says Emine Şenyaşar, adding that she takes sleeping pills to sleep and that she cannot stand the pain that her body is suffering, but she cannot stand injustice above all else. Referring to her arrested son, she says, "May justice be served, may my son Adil be released and let us go home."

She is constantly crying. All she wants is that their voices be heard. She says thatshe cannot understand how people can stay silent in the face of a massacre that happened before the eyes of everyone.

'Prosecutors don't dare to do it'

Speaking after his mother, Ferit Şenyaşar says, "When we started sitting six months ago, we thought that no one could stay silent in the face of our calls for justice for a long time, but everyone is silent."

Ferit Şenyaşar says that even though they know the reason behind this silence, they still cannot accept it: "There is a single incident, but there are two separate court cases. My brother has been sentenced to 37 years, 9 months in prison over the incident that happened in our shop. My brothers and my father were killed in the hospital, but there is no court case.

"Eight prosecutors have changed so far, only a single prosecutor dared to file a court case. That prosecutor said, 'I have identified that 23 people were involved in the incident. Some heads will roll.' The prosecutor was relocated somewhere else without being able to file the court case.

"A massacre was carried out in the hospital before the eyes of everyone. The person who organized it was the elder brother of AKP MP İbrahim Halil Yıldız; the MP is also involved in the incidents. For this reason, no prosecutor files a lawsuit or wants to be assigned to the file."

What happened?

During the election campaign of ruling AKP Urfa MP İbrahim Halil Yıldız in Suruç, Urfa on June 14, 2018, an attack turned into an armed conflict, which claimed the lives of Yıldız's brother Mehmet Şah Yıldız, shop owner Hacı Esvet Şenyaşar and his sons Adil and Celal Şenyaşar.

Having lost his father and two brothers and been wounded himself in the incident, Fadıl Şenyaşar was discharged from hospital and detained on June 17. He was then arrested and sent to prison.

Demanding justice for two sons, husband and her arrested son, Emine Şenyaşar and her son Ferit Şenyaşar, who survived the attack, have been keeping a "justice watch" in front of the courthouse. (RT/SD)