Suruç victims laid to rest

ISTANBUL

HÜRRİYET photo

A number of the victims of the deadly bombing in Turkey’s southeastern district of Suruç have been laid to rest in their hometowns across the country.

While the last two bodies of the Suruç attack, Nuray Koçan and Duygu Tuna, were handed to their families, some of the other 32 victims were laid to rest. 

The families of 20-year-old Polen Ünlü and Hatice Ezgi Sadet, who was the same age as her close friend, decided to lay their daughters to rest next to each other at Istanbul’s Ihlamurkuyu Çırçır cemetery in the Ümraniye district, even though one was a Sunni Muslim, while the other was an Alevi. 

A funeral ceremony was held at the Ümraniye Cemevi, a house of worship for Alevis, located in the Ihlamurkuyu neighborhood for Sadet, while the funeral prayer for Ünlü was held at a mosque in the same neighborhood. 

Ali Sadet, Ezi Sadet’s father, said he thought of Ünlü as a daughter and when the proposition of the two girls being laid down together came from Ünlü’s parents, he immediately accepted it. 

Upon the Sadet family’s request, people who came to attend the ceremony at the cemevi and the wreaths they brought were searched for security reasons. 

The blast on July 20 in Suruç tore through a group of university-aged students from an activist group as they gathered before a planned trip to help rebuild the nearby Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane, which had been left in ruins by attacks by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in recent months.

Police intervened in a group of people who got into a discussion with the anti-riot police who were standing guard before the mosque in Istanbul’s Üsküdar district, where the funeral prayer for Fikriye Ece Dinç, another Suruç victim, was held. Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) co-chair Figen Yüksekdağ, who attended the funeral, tried to ease the tension. 

“As of now the nation and people of Turkey will build their own peace and democracy as this political government, this mentality has come to point where it has moved away from humanity values,” Cihan News Agency quoted Yüksekdağ as saying. 

HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş attended the funeral ceremonies of Ferdane and Nartan Kılıç, a mother and son, respectively, who died in the attack. Sinem Kılıç, the daughter of late Ferdane Kılıç, who was also wounded in Suruç, was among the group of people to hold the cascade of her mother and brother. 

Çağdaş Aydın, 27, was laid to rest in the eastern province of Tunceli after a ceremony at a cemevi, while his father, Fethi Aydın, who was wounded in the blast, said he should have been in the place of his son. 

Meanwhile, a number of people carrying Kalashnikov rifles and pistols were seen at the front lines among the hundreds attending the funeral of two Suruç bombing victims from Istanbul’s Gazi neighborhood.

One of those carrying a Kalashnikov fired multiple shots in the air during the funeral ceremony of İsmet Şeker and Cemil Yıldız, two victims of the deadly attack originally from the Gazi neighborhood. 

While 22-year-old Yunus Emre Şen was laid to rest in the eastern province of Van, Nazegül Boyraz, 55, was laid to rest in Istanbul’s Maltepe district. 

Mücahit Erol, 18, Serhat Devrim, 19, and Med Ali Barutçu, 20, were all laid to rest in the eastern province of Muş.