Green Left Party Urfa MP, Ferit Şenyaşar, and his mother Emine Şenyaşar walked towards the Ministry of Justice building to meet with the ministry’s officials. However, the police prevented the family from entering.

The family, bypassing the police blockade, marched towards the Ministry, trying to enter the building. The people in the ministry stated that the minister and his deputy were not in the building and closed the door to prevent the family from entering.

Early on Tuesday morning, the Şenyaşar family held a press conference in the Parliament about their Justice Vigil, and said: "If justice is not provided, we will continue our struggle in Ankara."

Emine Şenyaşar underlined that she was holding a vigil against persecution. She added: “My son should be released. They killed my family, they put my son in jail. They murdered my husband before my eyes. If they don't let my son free, I will continue my sit-in in front of the Ministry of Justice."

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 have 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" in the hearing to be held in Malatya on Tuesday, July 18.