CHP submits motion for national mourning period over Suruç killings

ANKARA

CİHAN photo

The Republican People’s Party (CHP) tabled a motion on July 22 for the declaration of a three-day long period of national mourning over the killings of dozens of people in a suicide bomb attack earlier this week in Turkey’s southeast.

The motion was presented to the parliament with the signatures of the CHP’s Sezgin Tanrıkulu, Veli Ağbaba and Özgür Özel.

A social message united against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has become a priority, read the motion. 

“If we have previously declared mourning for the king of any old republic, mourning at a national level certainly needs to be declared to commemorate the 32 young people who we lost [in Suruç],” CHP Deputy Chair Haluk Koç said on July 21, speaking at a press conference.

“It is the government that will take this decision and it needs to take it without delay,” Koç said.

The absence of official national mourning has led to fury among many Turkish citizens, after 32 people were killed and more than 100 wounded on July 20 when a bomb ripped through a crowd of young socialist activists preparing to take aid over the border into Syria.

As Koç implied, back in January the government had declared national mourning for Saudi Arabia’s former King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz.