At least eight children and one teacher died this Wednesday in a shooting at a middle school (ages 10-14) in Kahramanmaras, in southern Turkey. The alleged attacker is an eighth-grade student, 14 years old, who later shot himself, according to the provincial government delegate, Mükerrem Ünlüer, in statements to Turkish television. This is the second shooting at a Turkish school in just 48 hours: on Tuesday, a teenager opened fire at a high school in Sanliurfa (southeast Turkey), injuring 16 people. He then committed suicide.
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Ünlüer explained that the Kahramanmaras attacker entered the school armed with five pistols and seven magazines belonging to his father – a former member of the security forces – and opened fire in two fifth-grade classrooms (ages 10-11). Later, the government delegate explained, the teenager “shot himself,” although he clarified that it is not yet known whether it was accidental, the result of the “chaos” of the situation, or “a deliberate act.”
“He shot the entire classroom. He kept shooting nonstop. He changed the magazine and kept shooting,” explained Ünal Ates, local leader of the opposition CHP party, to the newspaper Cumhuriyet, citing testimonies from officials who witnessed the shooting.
The shots were heard throughout the neighborhood, according to witnesses cited by the NTV channel, which led parents to come to the school to see what was happening. While the police intervened to try to stop the massacre, the yard filled with parents trying to find out what had happened to their children, leading to tense scenes. Numerous ambulances were dispatched to the scene and Turkish television showed images of covered bodies and injured people being evacuated.
The Interior Minister, Mustafa Çiftçi, who traveled to the area along with three other Turkish government ministers, reported that 13 people remain hospitalized, six of whom are in intensive care. Four prosecutors have been assigned to investigate the case, and the attacker’s father, a retired chief police inspector, has already been arrested. When asked by journalists about what measures are being considered to prevent further attacks, Minister Çiftçi only said that “measures will be taken,” without specifying which ones.
Just hours before the new shooting, in a speech to his parliamentary group, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that one person had been detained in connection with Tuesday’s attack and four officials had been removed from their duties. “Those who are negligent and guilty will be held accountable,” he promised.
The attacker in this case was a former student of the institute, born in 2007, who had left school in ninth grade to study remotely. According to Turkish media, in the days before the attack, he posted threatening messages on social media, which were reported by the school administration to the police, who, however, did not take action. There were also no guards at the door, so the attacker was able to enter the school with a semi-hidden shotgun in a bag shortly before recess ended.
“He didn’t say anything. He just entered and started shooting. Four or five times. Two people were injured, then he went to the next classroom. We threw ourselves to the ground, then two classmates jumped out the window,” explained one of the injured students, cited by the local press. The government delegate in Sanliurfa, Hasan Sildak, explained that the police officers who arrived at the institute proceeded to evacuate the center and managed to surround the attacker until, seeing himself lost, “he took his own life.” Nine of the injured remain hospitalized, and at least two teachers are in serious condition.
Civil society organizations have warned of the increase in licensed and unlicensed weapons in Turkey over the last decade. According to data from the Umut Foundation, in 2025 there were 3,422 incidents of violence involving weapons, mostly firearms, in which 2,225 people died.