Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), have rejected proposals from opposition parties for a parliamentary probe into the murder of four people in Şanlıurfa’s Suruç district in June and a train accident in the Çorlu district of Tekirdağ in early July.
A family lost three members in a deadly confrontation with an AKP deputy in Suruç on June 14.
Ten days before the presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkey, a political dispute had erupted between members of the Şenyaşar family and AKP deputy İbrahim Halil Yıldız’s family during a campaign visit by Yıldız to the Şenyaşar shop in Suruç.
The heated dispute turned into an armed confrontation leaving M. Şah Yıldız, brother of the AKP deputy, dead.
Sustaining injuries in the altercation, Şenyaşar brothers Adil and Celal went to the city hospital where they were brutally killed, according to the autopsy reports. The father, Esvet Şenyaşar, a Democratic Regions Party (DBP) official, was also murdered at the hospital as he was trying to visit his sons.
The proposal for a parliamentary investigation into the killings in Suruç was made by pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) deputies Fatma Kurtulan and Ayhan Bilgen on Tuesday. AKP and MHP deputies rejected their proposal.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) proposal for a parliamentary investigation into the train accident in Çorlu was also rejected by AKP and MHP deputies on Tuesday. A total of 24 people were killed in the accident when a passenger train derailed. Many people said the accident occurred because of the authorities’ failure to regularly maintain the tracks, which dislodged following heavy rain in the region.