Large Turkish flags hang from the trees around the open grave where Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, a Turkish American activist killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank, was to be laid to rest near Turkey’s Aegean coast on Saturday.
Her friends and relatives gathered to mourn at her family’s home nearby, where her father said he felt that the United States, where he lived for 25 years and obtained citizenship, had not done enough to respond to the killing.
“I have been living in the U.S. for 25 years, and I know how seriously the U.S. looks out for the safety of its citizens abroad,” her father, Mehmet Suat Eygi, said in an interview. “I know that when something happens, the U.S. will attack like the eagle on its seal. But when Israel is in question, it transforms into a dove.”
Ms. Eygi, 26, was shot in the head and died on Sept. 6 during a protest by Palestinian and international activists against an Israeli settler outpost near the West Bank village of Beita. The Israeli military has said it is “highly likely” that she was hit “indirectly and unintentionally” and that the matter was still being investigated.
Other activists who were with her at the time said that she had been standing more than 200 yards away and downhill from the soldiers. They added that the protest, during which some demonstrators had thrown stones, had calmed down by the time she was shot.
Her death came as international criticism of Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza has been rising. More that 41,000 people have been killed, according to the Gazan health ministry, which does not differentiate between combatants and civilians.
Airstrikes continued into Saturday, with Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s news agency, reporting that 10 people, including women and children, had been killed in a strike that hit a home in Gaza City, among other deaths in the enclave. The Israeli military did not immediately comment.
Senior officials from both of Ms. Eygi’s countries — she was born in Turkey but obtained U.S. citizenship in 2005, her father said, and had lived in the Seattle area — have condemned her killing.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken on Tuesday called the killing “unprovoked and unjustified,” and on Wednesday, President Biden said in a statement that he was “outraged and deeply saddened” by her death.
“There must be full accountability,” Mr. Biden said.
Turkey performed its own autopsy on her body. The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said on Monday that his country would pursue her case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
“We will take every legal step for her blood not to remain on the ground,” Mr. Erdogan said in his remarks, given after a cabinet meeting in the Turkish capital, Ankara. “The genocide-committing Israeli leadership will absolutely be held accountable for the crimes it has committed,” he added.
Israel has rejected accusations of genocide, saying it is defending itself after the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7 that killed an estimated 1,200 people.
In Didim, a resort town near the Aegean coast where Ms. Eygi was to be buried, her father said that Turkey had taken a great interest in her case but that he had not received even a condolence call from any American official. An official from the U.S. Embassy in Ankara said that it had been providing consular assistance and had been in touch with Ms. Eygi’s family and with the Turkish authorities.
Mr. Eygi said, “The Turkish government is following the case,” adding, “I hope the U.S. government will do the same. An independent investigation is our biggest wish, but we don’t know how it can be done.”
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