Body of Turkish-American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi killed by Israel returns to Turkey
The body of Turkish-American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, who was killed by Israeli forces in Palestine, was received with a solemn ceremony at Istanbul Airport on Sept. 13. Her funeral will be held in her hometown of Aydın a day later. While Israel claimed that Eygi was "most probably not directly" targeted, a forensic report obtained by Anadolu Agency indicated that the bullet struck her "almost in a straight line on her left side."
Duvar English
The body of a Turkish-American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi was received with a solemn ceremony at the airport in Istanbul on Sept. 13, arriving a week after she was shot in the head by Israeli troops in the occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank.
The Istanbul governor and other officials lined up in front of Eygi's coffin, wrapped in the red-and-white Turkish flag, with police in formal uniforms standing guard at each end.
An imam led prayers at the ceremony at Istanbul Airport after her body was flown overnight via Baku from Tel Aviv. Eygi, 26, was killed as she took part in a protest against settlement expansion in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
After the ceremony, Eygi's body was sent to Aegean İzmir province by plane. The funeral was set to be held on Sept. 14 in the Turkish Aegean coastal city of Didim in the Aydın province, where her family lives.
Israel has acknowledged that its troops shot Eygi, a Turkish-American educated in Washington State, but says they did so unintentionally during a demonstration turning violent.
Washington has said the killing was unacceptable. Ankara says it will request international arrest warrants for those to blame for what it calls an intentional killing.
Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç said the Ankara chief prosecutor's office is investigating "those responsible for the martyrdom and murder of our sister Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi."
Forensic report on Eygi's murder refutes Israel's claims, Anadolu Agency reports
The autopsy report of the Forensic Medicine Institute affiliated to the Palestinian Ministry of Justice, obtained by Anadolu Agency (AA), stated that Eygi's cause of death was "fragmentation, bleeding and oedema in the brain caused by a gunshot wound."
The report noted that the Nablus Chief Public Prosecutor's Office decided to transfer Eygi's body to the Institute of Forensic Medicine at An-Najah University in the city for an autopsy and to determine the cause of death.
"The path of the bullet in the cranial cavity was almost in a straight line from left to right," the report said. It was pointed out that Eygi was brought to Rafidya State Hospital at 2.06 p.m. local time on Sept. 6 and showed no signs of life.
The report emphasized that the bullet hit Eygi's brain and pointed out that the bullet fragments were found in the brain. The report stated that no other wounds were found on Eygi's body except her head.
The Washington Post's investigative report using more than 50 video footage and eyewitness interviews shows that Eygi was shot in the head from a distance by an Israeli sniper 20 minutes after the demonstrations ended contrary to the Israel's claims.
On the other hand, the Israeli army refused to answer the daily's questions about why the soldiers opened fire at the demonstrators so long after their withdrawal and from a distance where they posed no apparent threat.
Who was Eygi?
Eygi was born in Turkey's Antalya province in 1998 and moved to the U.S. with her parents shortly after. Although she spent most of her later life there, she often visited Turkey.
She has reported to have been involved in political campaigns before starting her university education in the U.S., while her social media account shows that she actively participated in street protests with socialist groups.
In 2016-2017, Eygi took an active part in the environmentalist campaign to protest and prevent the planned construction of an oil pipeline in the US state of North Dakota and stayed in the protest camp established there.
Eygi double-majored in psychology and Middle Eastern languages at the University of Washington, in the United States and have recently graduated. At the graduation ceremony, she unfurled a Palestinian flag with the inscription "Free Palestine."
Speaking to AA, her friends stated that Eygi also participated in protests against Israel's aggression against Gaza during her university life.
She was a human rights activist who volunteered with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), an organization that supports Palestinians in peaceful ways against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Rachel Corrie, another U.S. citizen crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in 2003, was a member of the same movement.
After her graduation, Eygi decided to go to West Bank. "Ayşenur felt compelled to travel to the West Bank to stand in solidarity with Palestinian civilians who continue to be subjected to oppression and violence," the statement released by her family after her death read.