At funeral in Turkey, family mourns American activist killed by Israeli gunfire

DIDIM, Turkey – With Turkish flags flying and chants of “God is great” resounding through the cemetery, Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a Turkish American activist killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank, was laid to rest Saturday in a town on Turkey’s Aegean coast.

Although she moved to the United States as a toddler, acquired citizenship and spent most of her life there, the funeral for Eygi, 26, was deeply Turkish, and profoundly pro-Palestinian.

Hundreds of people, many carrying Palestinian flags and wearing Palestinian scarves, gathered at the central mosque in the town of Didim to say prayers for her, including senior Turkish officials. No U.S. officials attended, and there was not an American flag in sight.

In the 11 months since the war in the Gaza Strip began, Eygi’s two countries have taken starkly different stances toward the conflict. The United States has stood by Israel, continuing to supply its military with bombs, even as concerns about civilian deaths have mounted.

Turkey, on the other hand, has embraced the Palestinians, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan decrying Israel’s conduct and defending Hamas, which Israel, the United States and other countries consider a terrorist organization.

Two relatives of Eygi said the American response to her killing had frustrated them. In an interview before her funeral, her father, also a U.S. citizen, said the United States had not stood up for her.

“I have been living in the U.S. for 25 years, and I know how seriously the U.S. looks out for the safety of its citizens abroad,” said her father, Mehmet Suat Eygi. “I know that when something happens, the U.S. will attack like the eagle on its seal. But when Israel is in question, it transforms into a dove.”

Eygi was shot in the head and died Sept. 6 during a protest by Palestinian and international activists against an Israeli settler outpost near the village of Beita in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli military has said it is “highly likely” that she was hit “indirectly and unintentionally” and that the matter was still being investigated.

Other activists who were with her at the time said that she had been standing more than 200 yards away and downhill from the soldiers. They added that the protest, during which some demonstrators had thrown stones, had calmed down by the time she was shot.

Senior officials from both of Eygi’s countries – she was born in Turkey but obtained U.S. citizenship in 2005, her father said, and had lived in the Seattle area – have condemned her killing.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the killing “unprovoked and unjustified,” and President Joe Biden said in a statement that he was “outraged and deeply saddened” by her death.

“There must be full accountability,” Biden said.

But addressing the mourners in Didim on Saturday, Numan Kurtulmus, speaker of Turkey’s parliament, criticized not just Israel but also countries that support it.

“This is not only the crime of a few murderous Israeli soldiers,” he said. “This is also the crime of the collaborative states who have the back of that terrorist state.”

Underlining the extent to which Turkey has adopted Eygi’s killing as a national cause, other officials who attended the funeral included the vice president; the justice, interior and foreign ministers; the head of the largest opposition party; and a former prime minister.

Turkey’s president, Erdogan, said Monday that his country would seek to add her killing to a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. After Eygi’s body arrived in Turkey on Friday, Turkey performed an autopsy before transporting it to Didim.

Israel has rejected accusations of genocide, saying it is defending itself after the Hamas-led attack Oct. 7 that killed an estimated 1,200 people.

Eygi’s death came as international criticism of Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza has been rising. More that 41,000 people have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between combatants and civilians.

Airstrikes continued into Saturday, with Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s news agency, reporting that 10 people, including women and children, had been killed in a strike that hit a home in Gaza City, among other deaths in the enclave. The Israeli military did not immediately comment.

Friends and relatives of Egyi recalled her as passionate about standing up for people she considered to be victims of injustice.

That conviction fueled her involvement, often with socialist groups, in activism in Mexico, Myanmar, Australia and Seattle. In the winter of 2016-17, she camped out with other activists in North Dakota to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline, which was slated to run near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

She also became a fervent supporter of the Palestinians, which drove her to travel to the Israeli-occupied West Bank to join protests against Israeli settlements there.

“She was an outlier,” her cousin, Sercan Eygi, 28, said in an interview after the funeral. “Most activists don’t even bother moving apart from their safe zone.”

Eygi had been in Turkey before traveling to the West Bank and had told her relatives that she was going to Jordan, which is much safer, her cousin said. When they discovered through social media where she actually was, he called her.

“I asked her not to die,” he recalled telling her. “She said, ‘I’ll try my best.’ ”

She was shot the next day.

No call for condolences

The cousin was at work in Portugal, where he lives, when a colleague told him an American activist of Turkish descent had been killed in the West Bank. He asked for the name, learned that his cousin was gone and had to inform other relatives, he said.

The Turkish government had helped the family, he said, and he was glad that it was pushing for accountability. He did not feel the same about the United States.

“I honestly think the U.S. government is trying to do the least reaction possible,” he said.

Egyi’s father said that he had not received even a condolence call from a U.S. official.

“The Turkish government is following the case,” he said, adding, “I hope the U.S. government will do the same.”

An official from the U.S. Embassy in Ankara said the U.S. government had been helping the family since Eygi’s death.

“From the moment of this horrific tragedy, our consular teams – first in Jerusalem and then in Ankara – have been in touch with family members and offering consular services,” the official said. “Our posts overseas have no higher priority than U.S. citizens, and Aysenur Eygi was a U.S. citizen.”

Many mourners Saturday had not known Eygi but had been moved by accounts of her life and death.

In the crowd outside the mosque, Semanur Sonmez Yaman, 50, said she had come from Istanbul to pay her respects because Eygi had “stood up to persecution.”

More than 11 months of war in Gaza and so many deaths had left her with “a feeling of desperation,” she said, but added that Eygi had encouraged her.

“Of course the death is very painful, but someone from Turkey dying there doing something good gives me a type of serenity,” she said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.