Turkey announced on Thursday that it has opened an investigation into Israel’s killing of Turkish American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi and will be seeking arrest warrants in relation to her death.
Eygi “was deliberately targeted and killed by Israeli soldiers during a peaceful demonstration in solidarity with Palestinians,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said. “We will make every effort to ensure that this crime does not go unpunished.”
Turkey’s Justice Minister, Yilmaz Tunc, added that Turkish officials are probing “those responsible for the martyrdom and murder of our sister Aysenur Ezgi Eygi,” per Reuters, and that the country has evidence regarding her killing and will be making requests for international arrest warrants.
Turkish officials have arranged transport for Eygi’s body, and are expecting it to be flown from Tel Aviv and arrive in Istanbul on Friday. She is expected to be buried in her father’s hometown of Didim, on the Aegean coast, the Turkish ministry said.
Israeli forces shot Eygi in the head last week in the occupied West Bank, after a protest against illegal Israeli settlements. Eygi was 26, a recent graduate of the University of Washington and a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), the same group that fellow Washington native Rachel Corrie was volunteering with when Israeli forces killed her in 2003. She had dual Turkish and American citizenship, and visited Turkey frequently.
Fellow volunteers, friends and family have remembered Eygi as a compassionate, principled person. According to The Washington Post, fellow ISM activists said that she had expressed concerns that her activist work “wouldn’t make a difference.” She had arrived in Palestine just days before Israel killed her.
Providing no evidence, the Israeli military said it found in an initial inquiry that Israeli soldiers hit her unintentionally and were aiming at a “main instigator” throwing rocks at Israeli forces, amid a “violent riot.”
However, witness testimony and reports have shown Israel’s claims to be false on several levels. According to an investigation by The Washington Post, analyzing testimony from 13 eyewitnesses and video and photo evidence, Israeli forces shot Eygi over half an hour after the height of the protests. Israeli soldiers had forced the crowd to disperse using tear gas and live ammunition.
Further, the investigation found Eygi was standing amid an olive grove over 230 yards away from Israeli troops — more than two football fields away. “Even an Olympic stone thrower cannot make half that distance,” Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli who often joins anti-settlement protests in Beita, told The Washington Post.
A soldier on a roof had been aiming his gun toward her and Pollak, he said. After a few minutes of calm, during which Israeli forces didn’t fire off any more ammunition or tear gas, Eygi was shot in the back of the head. Though no footage was captured of the shooting, witness testimony strongly suggests that the lethal gunshot came from the soldier on the roof.
Despite this, however, U.S. officials have been repeating Israel’s arguments regarding her killing. On Tuesday, President Joe Biden echoed the Israeli military’s claim that her death was an “accident” — despite Israel’s long history of lying about its military conduct, open flouting of international law, and its many targeted killings of civilians, spanning decades.
Eygi’s family, members of Congress and advocates for Palestinian rights have called for the U.S. to launch a probe of her death independent of Israel’s. However, the administration is insistent on relying only on Israel’s word regarding her killing — in sharp contrast to Turkey’s actions.
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