The funeral of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a Turkish-American activist killed on September 6 in the West Bank, is being held in Turkey on Saturday with the aim of making her a symbol of her commitment to the Palestinian cause.
As soon as her death was announced, Ankara, which opened an investigation, strongly denounced this “arbitrary assassination” attributed to the Israeli army: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan assured that his country would do everything “so that the death of our daughter, Aysenur Ezgi, does not go unpunished”.
The 26-year-old woman, who arrived in the United States with her family at the age of ten months, is to be buried early this afternoon in the cemetery of Didim (southwest), on the Aegean coast, where her relatives live and where her parents and her partner who live in the United States have arrived.
A large crowd is expected, including “high-level” government officials, according to Ömer Çelik, spokesman for the ruling AK Party, as well as activists from Turkey’s main Islamic NGO, the IHH.
The burial is scheduled to take place after midday prayers, which will begin at 1:15 p.m. local time (10:15 a.m. GMT).
The young woman’s body arrived in Turkey on Friday morning from Tel Aviv via Baku. It was immediately transferred to Izmir, the country’s third largest city on the west coast, where a new autopsy was carried out.
The findings will be attached to the investigation report opened by the Ankara prosecutor, according to Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunç.
The young activist’s body was greeted upon arrival in Istanbul by the Turkish army’s guard of honour reserved for martyrs and by officials.
– “a very special person” –
International Solidarity Movement (ISM) activist Aysenur Eygi was shot in the head while taking part in a protest in the northern occupied West Bank, near Nablus.
The Israeli army considered it “very likely” that shots from its ranks killed the young woman “indirectly and unintentionally”.
An autopsy carried out by three Palestinian doctors, whose report was sent to AFP by the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, concluded that a direct shot had passed through the victim’s skull.
“Aysenur was a very special person. She was sensitive to human rights, to nature, to everything,” her father, Mehmet Suat Eygi, said outside the family home in Didim where his daughter, a recent graduate of the University of Washington, regularly vacationed.
Mr. Eygi welcomed the opening of an investigation by the Turkish authorities into “this arbitrary assassination”, as announced by the Minister of Justice, Yilmaz Tunç.
“I learned that our state is pursuing this arbitrary assassination by opening an investigation. I am pleased about that. I expect the same from the American government, because Aysenur was only ten months old when she arrived in the United States,” he said.
“The only thing I ask of the state is to demand justice for my daughter. That (her) blood be avenged. That those responsible be punished because she was deliberately targeted,” accused her mother, Rabia Birden, quoted by the Anadolu agency.
Turkey is considering issuing international arrest warrants, depending on the results of its investigation.
The minister also called on the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial and arbitrary executions to establish an independent commission of inquiry and to draft a report on Ms. Eygi’s death with the intention of joining it to the ongoing “genocide” proceedings against Israel before the International Court of Justice and in the investigation also underway before the International Criminal Court.
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