Deniz Poyraz, the daughter of an HDP employee, was shot dead when a gunman entered the party’s office in the western city of Izmir and opened fire.
Poyraz’s mother described seeing her daughter’s body. “I saw my dark-eyed baby. They shot her [in] her head and her chest. I kissed her forehead, covered in blood,” she told the pro-Kurdish Mezopotamya news agency.
HDP’s co-leader said the shooter’s plan was not one murder, but a “massacre.” Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Mithat Sancar said there was a planned meeting of 40 party officials at the office, but it was called off because of an unrelated reason just minutes before the shooting. “The plan here was clear,” he said. “What they wanted was a massacre.”
The alleged gunman was identified by the governor’s office as a former health worker with the initials OG. He is in custody. Local media reported the man had been to Syria and shared photos of a man posing with a weapon and flashing a nationalist Turkish hand sign.
HDP placed blame for the attack on the Justice and Development Party (AKP), the ruling party of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and its ally the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). “It is the government that targets our party and our provincial organizations; it is the Ministry of Interior that directs the provocateurs,” the party stated.
The attack has been condemned by parties in Turkey.
HDP is a vocal opponent of the AKP-MHP alliance, which accuses the pro-Kurdish party of ties with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The public prosecutor is trying to shut the party down. Chief Public Prosecutor of the Court of Cassation Bekir Sahin last week filed a second indictment against the party after a first one in March was rejected on technical grounds.
Hundreds of HDP members and supporters are under investigation or in jail, including Selahattin Demirtas, the HDP’s former leader along with his co-chair Figen Yuksekdag. Most are accused by Turkish authorities of having ties to the PKK, considered a terrorist organization in Turkey.
In a tweet, Demirtas sent his condolences on the murder of Poyraz, saying “Our pain is great, but so is our resistance and hope,” he tweeted, adding that the party will not be provoked into anger.
