Ankara launches probe into killing of Turkish-US activist

ANKARA

Ankara has opened an investigation into the death of a 26-year-old Turkish-American activist fatally shot by Israeli forces while protesting settlements in the occupied West Bank.

“We will conduct studies to prepare a report,” Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç said at an event in the capital Ankara on Sept. 12.

Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-year-old activist from Seattle, was shot on Sept. 6 while demonstrating near Mount Sbeih. Despite being away from the main protest area, she was hit by live fire used by Israeli soldiers.

Eygi was rushed to a hospital but later succumbed to her injuries. The Israeli military said she was "likely shot indirectly and unintentionally."

Tunç said Türkiye will work to include the findings in the ongoing genocide case against Israel, launched by South Africa at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

“We will work for the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry and the preparation of a report,” he added.

The procedures for transferring Eygi's body were completed by Turkish consulates in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, and the activist’s body is expected to arrive in Türkiye on Sept. 13, the Foreign Ministry confirmed.

Her body was to arrive via a flight from Tel Aviv to Baku late on Sept. 12 before being transferred to Istanbul, diplomatic sources told local media.

The burial is scheduled to take place on Sept. 13 or 14 in her hometown of Didim in western Türkiye, they added.

Late on Sept. 11, hundreds of people traveled to a Seattle beach to mourn Eygi.

“I can't imagine what she felt like in her last moments, lying alone under the olive trees,” one of her friends, Kelsie Nabass, told the crowd at the vigil. “What did she think of? And did she know all of us would show up here tonight, for her?”

Friends recalled Eygi as open, engaging, funny and devoted. The crowd spilled beyond a large rectangle of small black, red, green and white Palestinian flags staked in the sand to mark the venue for the vigil.

Many attendees wore traditional checked scarves – keffiyehs – in support of the Palestinian cause and carried photographs of Eygi in her graduation cap. They laid roses, sunflowers or carnations at a memorial where battery-operated candles spelled out her name in the sand.

Several described becoming fast friends with her last spring during the occupied “Liberated Zone” protest against the war in Gaza at the University of Washington.

Eygi helped negotiate with the administration on behalf of the protesters at the encampment, which was part of a broader campus movement against the war.

“She felt so strongly and loved humanity, loved people, loved life so much that she just wanted to help as many as she could,” Juliette Majid, 26, now a doctoral student at North Carolina State University, said in an interview. “She had such a drive for justice.”

Sue Han, a 26-year-old law student at the University of Washington, only knew Eygi for a few months after meeting her at the university encampment, but they quickly became close, laughing and blasting music in Eygi's beat-up green Subaru.

Han saw Eygi before she left. Eygi was feeling scared and selfish for leaving her loved ones to go to the West Bank with the activist group International Solidarity Movement; Han said she couldn't imagine anyone more selfless.

Eygi loved to connect people, bringing disparate friends together for coffee to see how they mixed, Han said. The same was true when she would bring people together on the beach, and it was true of the vigil, too.