Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), visited the justice vigil held by Emine Şenyaşar and her family in front of the courthouse in the southeastern Şanlıurfa province on Thursday. Kilicdaroglu is actively reaching out to Kurdish vtoers, among whom CHP is vastly underepresnted. He had recently also invited pro-Kurdish Rights Party HDP to engage with the parliament to end discrimination against Ethnic Kurds.
“The day will come when this state will reconcile with Emine Şenyaşar, too. First it will hold the murderers to account, and then ask for the mother’s blessing,” Kilicdaroglu said in a tweet announcing his visit.
Kilicdaroglu’s visit was part of his reconciliation tour, started in November. His proposal to forget and forgive the wrongs of yesterday is resonating with voters who don’t intend to choose CHP, in the sense that the cycle of revenge and retribution between alternating secularist and conservative regimes is promised to end if Kilicdaroglu and his Nation Alliance come to power.
“Why would they not hear the voice of a mother waiting for justice? Why would they not see her, feel her? This is the greatest pain. By Allah we will have justice. We will follow this case until justice is done. I hope those in Ankara hear how valuable justice is,” Kilicdaroglu said in his visit.
Emine Şenyaşar had met with Kilicdaroglu in June in neighboring Gaziantep, where the family home is, to ask for legal support from the CHP.
She has been holding a sit-in in front of the courthouse for 276 days, demanding justice for the killings of her husband and sons.
Ahead of the June 24 elections in 2018, relatives of ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputy İbrahim Halil Yıldız opened fire on a shop that the Şenyaşars ran. Yıldız had been campaigning for re-election.
The argument that led to the shooting had begun when the Şenyaşars said they would not vote for the AKP.
Three men lost their lives, not during the shooting but in a second attack by the Yıldız family on the hospital Hacı Esvet, Celal and Adıl Şenyaşar had been receiving treatment at. Several members of the Yıldız family fired dozens of bullets on the Şenyaşars in the emergency room.
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Mehmet Şah Yıldız, the AKP deputy’s brother, was also killed in the shooting at the shop.
In the court case that followed, Fadıl Şenyaşar was sentenced to 37 years in prison, while Enver Yıldız was sentenced to 18.
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The Şenyaşars appealed the ruling, saying the scene at the hospital had not been properly investigated, the second attack on the emergency room had not been taken into consideration when doling out sentences, and that overall, there had not been a fair trial.
Emine Şenyaşar has been protesting the court, and demanding that Fadıl Şenyaşar be moved out of solitary confinement, where he has bene held for almost 3.5 years.
The woman who lost her husband and sons in the incident is also facing five investigations for insulting the Yıldız family, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Journalist Emrullah Acar who had been covering the case since the beginning was detained in November. The Dicle Fırat Journalists Association, where Acar is a member, believes the detention aimed to prevent the journalist from reporting. Acar was released several days later.
Kilicdaroglu is the undeclared candidate of the Nation Alliance for the post of presidency. Since August, polls unanimously concluded he will beat Erdogan by steadily increasing margins. A new poll by Yoneylem finds that 59% of voters will not choose Erdogan ever again.
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