Body of activist killed by Israeli forces in West Bank returns to Turkey

The body of the Turkish-American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi has landed in Istanbul to continue to its final resting place in her family’s home town on the Aegean coast, with the coffin carried by a procession of Turkish honour guard soldiers.

An autopsy report conducted in the Israeli-occupied West Bank town of Nablus lists Eygi’s cause of death as a brain haemorrhage after a bullet penetrated her skull, as the 26-year-old attended a pro-Palestine protest in nearby Beita.

Eygi had arrived in the West Bank just five days earlier and attended the protest with the International Solidarity Movement, a group dedicated to bringing observers trained in non-violent methods to protests.

The report describes how Eygi’s clothing and hair tie were soaked in blood, and that her head showed further signs of injury that occurred when she dropped to the ground as the bullet struck.

The Israeli military said this week that Eygi was shot “indirectly and unintentionally” by one of its soldiers, drawing a rebuke from the activist’s family who said they were “deeply offended by the suggestion that her killing by a trained sniper was in any way unintentional”.

“Let us be clear, an American citizen was killed by a foreign military in a targeted attack,” they said. “The appropriate action is for President Biden and Vice-President Harris to speak with the family directly, and order an independent, transparent investigation into the killing of Ayşenur, a volunteer for peace.”

Turkish public prosecutors said they would conduct their own investigation into Eygi’s death, with a second autopsy due to be performed at a forensic medicine centre in the coastal city of İzmir before a funeral in her family’s nearby home town of Didim in the coming days. Her family, who moved with Eygi from Turkey to Seattle when she was less than a year old, described her as a “kind-hearted, silly and passionate soul”, and called on Biden not to accept the Israeli military’s description that Eygi was struck by accident.

While Eygi’s family called on US officials to do more, her killing has spurred a widening rift between Turkey and the Israeli government, further inflaming tensions as the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, condemned Eygi’s killing and pledged to make Israel “account for its crimes against humanity before the law”.

Announcing the repatriation of Eygi’s body, Turkey’s foreign ministry said: “We will make every effort to ensure that this crime does not go unpunished.”

Erdoğan has been fiercely critical of the Israeli assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 41,000 people since October, while officials have expressed alarm about Israeli settlers praying in the grounds of al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, one of the holiest sites in Islam.

The Turkish president also announced a halt to much of the estimated £5.3bn in annual exports to Israel last May after years of improvements in the relationship, much of them signalled through trade.

A month later, Erdoğan told a meeting of his Justice and Development party officials in his family home town of Rize that Turkey could intervene “so that Israel can’t do these ridiculous things to Palestine”, without suggesting what form this might take.

The president’s fiery stance has only drawn Ankara closer to countries that were previously regional foes. This month, the foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, addressed the Arab League in Cairo, the first time a Turkish official has done so in more than a decade.

Fidan called for “joint action to put pressure on the international community to reject Israel’s actions”, warning that any countries supporting Benjamin Netanyahu would be “held accountable”.

In August, Turkey formally applied to support South Africa’s case against Israel at the international court of justice in The Hague, which accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza and calls on Israeli forces to immediately cease fighting in the Palestinian territory.