The Ayser Çalık Secondary School, located in the city of Kahramanmaraş (Turkey), where last Wednesday a 14-year-old armed student carried out a shooting that left nine people dead — eight children and a teacher — will remain closed following the suspension of classes, initially ordered for two days, according to Turkish authorities.
Teaching activities at the school in Kahramanmaraş, situated in the Onikişubat district where the tragedy took place, were suspended following the attack on 15 April by İsa Aras Mersinli, a 14-year-old pupil at the school. Provincial government sources quoted by the Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet indicated that, to avoid re-triggering the trauma among the students at the school, they will be transferred to other nearby schools from Monday, whilst the school will remain closed indefinitely pending a final decision on whether the closure will be permanent or not, which will be taken in the coming days.
Several parents interviewed by the Turkish newspaper supported the measure, although they stressed that the aftermath for their children remains very much present. “We don’t want our children to return to this school. After the trauma they experienced here and the images of them jumping out of windows, how can we send them back?”, they said.
New details about İsa Aras Mersinli, the perpetrator of the attack
The school shooting in Turkey also left thirteen people injured before the alleged perpetrator also died from causes that remain unclear, with the hypothesis of suicide being considered, although it cannot be ruled out that the young man shot himself by mistake amid the tension and chaos.
Both teachers and acquaintances of the minor who carried out the deadly shooting describe İsa Aras Mersinli, the pupil who using 5 guns and 7 magazines stolen from his father carried out the massacre, as someone with problematic and worrying behaviour. Mersinli, who had warned of “an imminent attack” based on information found on his computer and who used a profile picture of Elliot Rodger – a young man responsible for another massacre in 2014 in Isla Vista (California) – on his WhatsApp profile, had been active on social media prior to the attack.
In a video shared on social media, a minor girl in Argentina who claimed to have met Mersinli through online platforms such as Discord and Reddit stated that he had spoken openly about carrying out an attack on his school and that several users had tried to dissuade him from the idea. According to the girl, Mersinli used the alias ‘Konata’ on these platforms, and following the shooting, videos emerged of him handling firearms and wearing a police cap – believed to have belonged to his father – posing as a Nazi officer, as well as discussing recent shooting practice. This information, as well as the authenticity of the videos, is still under investigation.
As part of the investigation launched by the public prosecutor’s office following the shooting at the Ayser Çalık School in Kahramanmaraş, his father, Uğur Mersinli, a retired police commissioner, was arrested. The father told investigators that the weapons used by the minor were kept under lock and key at the family home, and claimed he did not know how his son had managed to gain access to them. He also explained that he had recently taken his son to a shooting range after the young man had insisted on it, and that his son was struggling with gender identity issues and had difficulties adapting to society; he had recently seen a psychologist, who had recommended psychiatric follow-up. These and other details will be key to determining how the minor planned the attack and how he managed to gain access to the weapons he used to carry out the massacre.
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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