In a shocking outbreak of school violence that has shaken Turkey, a second mass shooting in as many days left nine people dead and 13 others injured Wednesday when an 8th-grade student opened fire randomly at a school in the country’s southern Kahramanmaras province, a region where such mass casualty attacks have historically been extremely rare.
According to local and national officials, the 13-year-old attacker brought multiple firearms — which authorities believe belonged to his father, a former police officer — hidden in his backpack to the school. After entering two separate classrooms, the teen began shooting indiscriminately. Initial reports had placed the death toll at four, but Interior Minister Mustafa Ciftci later confirmed the updated fatality count in an official statement, adding that six of the 13 wounded remain in intensive care, with three in critical condition. Kahramanmaras Governor Mukerrem Unluer told reporters the suspect was carrying five handguns and seven ammunition magazines, and died during the incident. Authorities have not yet confirmed whether the teen’s death was a suicide or an accidental shooting amid the chaos of the attack, Unluer added. Turkish police have since detained the suspect’s father, Ugur Mersinli, for questioning, state-run Anadolu Agency reported.
Verified footage from the scene has captured the panic and terror that unfolded during the attack. A video recorded by a nearby resident and verified by Agence France-Presse shows terrified students leaping from first-floor windows to escape the gunfire, while dozens more run for safety through the school’s courtyard. Roughly 15 gunshots can be heard in the 90-second clip. Other footage from private Turkish news agency IHA shows an evacuated victim being carried into an ambulance, alongside distraught parents rushing to the school after news of the attack broke. Law enforcement quickly locked down the area surrounding the school, and emergency response vehicles flooded the site. Both Turkey’s interior minister and education minister traveled immediately to Kahramanmaras to oversee the response, while Justice Minister Akin Gurlek confirmed public prosecutors have launched an urgent investigation into the incident.
Wednesday’s attack comes just 24 hours after another school shooting in Turkey, which also ended in the attacker’s death. On Tuesday, a former student opened fire with a shotgun at his old high school in the Siverek district of Sanliurfa province, wounding 16 people — 10 of whom were students — before killing himself during a confrontation with police. In the wake of that first attack, police detained one suspect and suspended four local officials from their posts over alleged failures, and the school was ordered closed for four days.
Speaking to lawmakers from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in parliament, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed that any individual found negligent or responsible for security lapses that allowed the attacks will face full accountability. “There will certainly be accountability for anyone found at fault,” Erdogan said.
Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Ozgur Ozel has called for sweeping, nationwide upgrades to school security, arguing that the back-to-back attacks prove school violence in Turkey can no longer be dismissed as a series of isolated events. “This issue has turned into a growing and deepening security vulnerability,” Ozel wrote on social media platform X. He outlined a series of urgent measures he says are now non-negotiable: full screening at all school entrances and exits, an increase in on-site security personnel, upgraded campus camera systems, more frequent police patrols around school grounds, and updated, ready-to-deploy emergency crisis response plans. “The security of schools is entrusted to our state. No negligence or deficiency in this regard can be excused anymore,” Ozel added.
School shootings were an extremely rare occurrence in Turkey before this week. The most recent prior incident occurred in May 2024, when a expelled former student shot and killed a private high school principal in Istanbul. The country already enforces some of the strictest gun control regulations in the region, requiring all firearms to be licensed and registered, mandatory mental health and criminal background checks for gun owners, and harsh legal penalties for anyone found in possession of unregistered weapons.