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.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We’re presently working to find 1500 new monthly donors to Truthout before the end of the year.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy