Turkey is grappling with shock and grief after two successive school shooting incidents over a 48-hour period left four people dead and more than 30 others injured, in a rare outbreak of gun violence on Turkish educational campuses.
The deadlier of the two attacks unfolded on Wednesday afternoon in the southeastern Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, where an eighth-grade student opened fire inside Ayser Calik Middle School. Speaking in a live public address, Kahramanmaras governor Mukerrem Unluer confirmed that the shooting left three students and one teacher dead before the teen attacker turned the gun on himself and took his own life.
Initial investigations have found that the student smuggled five firearms and seven loaded ammunition magazines onto campus before carrying out the attack. The shooter fired intermittently into two separate classrooms, and the weapons he used are believed to belong to his father, a retired senior police officer, according to Unluer. In addition to the fatalities, 20 students were hurt in the attack, with four of those wounded remaining in critical condition and undergoing emergency surgery as of Wednesday evening.
In response to the incident, Turkish Justice Minister Akin Gurlek announced that seven senior prosecutors have been appointed to lead the official investigation, and a temporary media broadcast ban has been ordered to prevent outside interference with the probe. Cabinet ministers overseeing education, internal affairs, and health were immediately deployed to Kahramanmaras to coordinate emergency response and support affected families.
The Kahramanmaras attack came just one day after a separate school shooting in the southern Turkish province of Sanliurfa, which left 20 people wounded before the attacker also died by suicide. That attack was carried out by a 19-year-old man identified only by the initials O.K., a former student of Ahmet Koyuncu Vocational and Technical High School who told authorities he carried out the attack out of revenge for what he viewed as unfair treatment that led to his academic failures. He specifically targeted the school’s principal, according to local reports.
Turkish daily newspaper Sabah later revealed that the 19-year-old failed to finish middle school due to prolonged absenteeism, before transferring to an online distance education high school that he also did not complete. Weeks before the attack, O.K. began sending explicit threats to the school community, even writing in one message, “Get ready, there will be an attack at this school in a few days.” He was taken into custody over the threats just 24 hours before the shooting, but was subsequently released, prompting questions over official oversight.
School gun violence is extremely uncommon in Turkey, making the two back-to-back attacks all the more alarming. Local television commentators have raised the possibility that the incidents are linked as copycat attacks, noting that widespread national media coverage of the Sanliurfa shooting may have inspired the attacker in Kahramanmaras to carry out his attack just one day later. Turkish authorities have not yet confirmed that connection, but have pledged a full review of security protocols at schools across the country in the wake of the violence.