On the second day of their vigil in Ankara, Green and Left Party MP Ferit Şenyaşar and his mother Emine Şenyaşar went to the Ministry of Justice after their failed attempts to meet with authorities yesterday.

Kept waiting outside the building for a long while, Emine and Ferit Şenyaşar were finally admitted into the building to meet with the Deputy Minister of Justice, Ramazan Can.

Details of the meeting, held closed to the press, will be shared after the talk.

Security measures around the ministry building have been intensified and journalists removed from the area.

Background

On 14 June 2018, the bodyguards and relatives of AKP Urfa MP Ibrahim Halil Yıldız attacked the Şenyaşar family's shop in Suruç during the election campaign. In the attack, brothers Celal, Adil, Mehmet, Fadıl and Ferit Şenyaşar were severely injured and hospitalized. Relatives and supporters of AKP MP Yıldız killed Celal and Adil Şenyaşar in hospital, and their father Hacı Esvet Şenyaşar, when he went to the hospital to see his sons. He was brutally murdered, being lynched in front of his wife, Emine Şenyaşar.

Fadıl Şenyaşar, a survivor, received an almost 38-year prison sentence for killing the assailant, Mehmet Şah Yıldız, despite the fact that it was relatively quickly proven that the man was killed by his own men. To make matters worse, the trial was split into two parts. The incidents in the shop are being tried in Malatya, the events in the hospitals in Urfa.

More than five years have passed since the massacre. Yet neither Ibrahim Halil Yıldız nor the majority of his companions have had to answer for their deeds in court. The Turkish judiciary's handling of the lynchings is particularly perfidious. While only one of dozens of identified assailants has been sentenced so far, albeit to a symbolic sentence of 18 years, the court considered it mitigating that the act had happened "spontaneously out of an escalating quarrel".

Emine Şenyaşar and her son Ferit had been holding a Justice Vigil in front of the Courthouse of Urfa since 9 March 2021, demanding those responsible to be brought to account.

On the 846th day of the vigil in front of the Courthouse in Urfa, the Şenyaşar family ended their protest for the time being, announcing that they would move to Ankara if there was not "a hint of justice" at the hearing to be held in Malatya on July 18.

The 2nd hearing of the case in Malatya indeed did not see justice served as the court board rejected the request for the release of Fadıl Şenyaşar, considering the "strong suspicion of crime" and set the next hearing for October 6.

Fadıl Şenyalar, who has been detained in a solitary cell in Elazığ Prison for more than 5 years, said at the hearing: "I have been detained for 5 years, I do not accept this. I am being held here unjustly. I do not accept the accusations. There is no gun, but I am under arrest. If a gun were found, it would be confirmed that I did not shoot. They are hiding the gun because I did not commit the crime. I repeat my previous defenses and demand to be freed pending trial."