Turkish media outlets on Wednesday disclosed details of the results of the postmortem examination by the Izmir Forensics Institution in western Türkiye on the body of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, a 26-years-old Turkish American activist whose killing in West Bank caused outrage.
Eygi was attending a protest against illegal Jewish settlements in Palestine earlier this month when she was injured and taken to a hospital, where she succumbed to her wounds on Sept. 6. Though her family lives in the U.S., her body was taken to her ancestral homeland and buried on Sept. 14 in Didim, a town in the province of Aydın near Izmir where her grandparents lived.
Türkiye has already launched an investigation into her killing before her burial, and the Forensic Institute ran a postmortem examination on a young woman as part of the probe. The findings of the autopsy show the shot that hit Eygi was fired from a long distance while investigators found six metallic objects from her body, likely shrapnel pieces. The examination found Eygi suffered from brain bleeding and damage prior to her death. She had a one gunshot wound on her body and the report of investigators says this single wound alone was sufficient to cause death.
“According to the skin and subcutaneous findings of the firearm bullet core entry wound, since no burns, smoke, soot and gunpowder residues were detected around the firearm entry hole, the shot was fired from a distance,” the report concluded.
Israel’s killing of Eygi earlier this month drew international outrage, including from a host of Turkish officials, and U.S. Vice President and presidential contender Kamala Harris called the killing “unacceptable.”
The forensic autopsy report done in the Turkish coastal city of Izmir, where her body was recently repatriated before funeral services, said that no toxic substance was found in the blood.
The report said the entry wound was damaged and the bullet core was removed in the first autopsy performed in Palestine. No definite opinion could be formed about the direction of the shot or the bullet core due to a lack of images of the scene of the incident.
Eygi’s body, following the autopsy, was handed over to prosecutors for examination as “six metallic foreign objects were removed from the body, constituting evidence of a crime,” according to the report.
Taken as a whole, the report concluded that her death occurred as a result of a fracture of the bones of her head, bleeding between the membranes of the brain and brain tissue destruction due to firearm bullet injury.
Eygi was a human rights activist who was a volunteer of the International Solidarity Movement, which supports Palestinians through peaceful and civilian means against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. U.S. citizen Rachel Corrie, who was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in 2003, also belonged to the same movement.
On Sept. 3, Eygi went to observe a protest in the town of Beita in Nablus to stand against the illegal Israeli settlements there. The movement reported that on Sept. 6, Eygi was intentionally targeted and killed by an Israeli sniper standing on a nearby rooftop. Eyewitnesses reported that when she was shot in the head by the sniper, Eygi was far from the protest area. She was taken to a Palestinian hospital, but despite doctors’ best efforts, she could not be saved. Turkish diplomatic missions in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem coordinated the transfer of her body from Tel Aviv to Baku, Azerbaijan, before her final journey to Türkiye.
Thousands of people joined the funeral ceremony for Eygi on Saturday, including politicians from the ruling party and opposition parties, in a rare show of solidarity for the Palestinian cause Eygi died for. A portrait of her wearing her graduation gown was propped against the coffin as people paid their respects. Last Saturday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called the young activist’s father and pledged that they would file a complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) on her killing by Israel.
“The Palestinian leadership was engaged with the U.S. and Turkish authorities to ensure conducting a fair investigation into her killing and that work was underway to file a complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the crime of her assassination,” he said. Abbas announced his decision “to bestow upon her the Medal of the Star of Jerusalem in recognition of her dearly sacrifice for the Palestinian people’s right to freedom and independence and invited her parents and family to visit Palestine.”
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan earlier pledged to seek justice for Eygi and over 41,000 Gazan civilians killed by Israel since October 2023. “In courts of law, we will hold Israel accountable for the killing of Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, along with over 41,000 of our Gazan brothers and sisters,” he said at a news conference last week.
