A lawmaker from Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is accusing the Şenyaşar family, three members of which were murdered by people connected to him in 2018, of being members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) without any evidence, journalist Barış Pehlivan said in a column in the Cumhuriyet daily on Friday.
Esvet Şenyaşar and his two sons, Adil and Celal, were brutally murdered on June 14, 2018 in Şanlıurfa province.
They were initially attacked in their store and taken to a hospital. However, they were followed by the family of AKP deputy İbrahim Halil Yıldız to the hospital, where they were ultimately murdered. Eight more people were injured during fights between the two groups. An older brother of Yıldız was also killed.
According to Pehlivan, who said he met with Yıldız to talk about the 2018 events earlier this week, the lawmaker’s stance on the murders and the Şenyaşar family hadn’t changed and he still accuses the family of being terrorists.
“The attack may not be a terrorist attack, but the family is terrorist,” the journalist quoted Yıldız as saying, based on a statement from the confession of a PKK member, adding that it was a “very serious accusation” to make without evidence.
Pehlivan also said when he reminded Yıldız that both the police and the prosecutor’s office that dealt with the case hadn’t been able to prove the Şenyaşars’ ties to the PKK, the lawmaker replied, “Yes, that’s right.”
The journalist continued to say that he didn’t find it credible when the AKP deputy claimed that no one from his family or relatives was involved in the 2018 murders.
“Even if they were terrorists, something like this shouldn’t have happened in the hospital,” Pehlivan also quoted Yıldız as saying, adding that the lawmaker also strongly denied the claims that the security forces didn’t intervene in the events in the hospital at his request.
Pehlivan’s column comes as Emine Şenyaşar, who lost her husband and two sons in 2018, has been continuing a sit-in in front of a courthouse in Şanlıurfa province since March 2021 with the aim of demanding justice for her slain family members.
Two Şenyaşar brothers, Ferit and Fadıl, who were injured in the 2018 events but survived, were later detained, and Fadıl Şenyaşar was arrested. However, none of Yıldız’s relatives or his bodyguards were detained despite the fact that three people had died.
Only 15 months later, on Sept.18, 2020, was Yıldız’s older brother Enver Yıldız arrested.
The Yıldız family claimed the Kurdish Şenyaşar family had links to the outlawed PKK and that they had been victims of terrorism.