Hundreds gather to remember American killed by the Israeli military

A photo is placed among flowers in memory of 26-year-old Aysenur Ezgi Eygi at a vigil.

By Gene Johnson

Sept. 12, 2024 9 AM PT

SEATTLE — For her 26th birthday in July, human rights activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi gathered friends for a bonfire at one of her favorite places, a sandy beach in Seattle where green-and-white ferries cruise across the dark, flat water and osprey glide overhead.

On Wednesday night, hundreds of people traveled to the same beach in grief, love and anger to mourn her. Eygi was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers last Friday in the occupied West Bank, where she had gone to protest and bear witness to Palestinian suffering.

“I can’t imagine what she felt like in her last moments, lying alone under the olive trees,” one of her friends, Kelsie Nabass, told the crowd at the vigil. “What did she think of? And did she know all of us would show up here tonight, for her?”

Eygi, who also held Turkish citizenship, was killed while demonstrating against settlements in the West Bank. A witness who was there, Israeli protester Jonathan Pollak, said Eygi posed no threat to Israeli forces and that the shooting came during a moment of calm, following clashes between stone-throwing protesters and Israeli troops firing tear gas and bullets.

The Israeli military said Eygi was likely shot “indirectly and unintentionally” by its soldiers, drawing criticism from American officials, including President Biden, who said he was “outraged and deeply saddened” her killing.

“There must be full accountability,” Biden said in a statement released Wednesday. “And Israel must do more to ensure that incidents like this never happen again.”

The deaths of American citizens in the West Bank have drawn international attention, such as the fatal shooting of a prominent Palestinian American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, in 2022 in the Jenin refugee camp. The deaths of Palestinians who do not have dual nationality rarely receive the same scrutiny.

Eygi’s family has demanded an independent investigation.

On Thursday, Turkey’s justice minister said his country is investigating Eygi’s death. Turkish Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said the Ankara chief prosecutor’s office was leading the Turkish probe. Tunc said Turkey would present its findings to a U.N. court overseeing a genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa over the war in Gaza.

“We will take every judicial step for our martyred daughter, Aysenur,” Tunc said.

As the sun set Wednesday, turning the sky on the horizon a pale orange, friends recalled Eygi as open, engaging, funny and devoted. The crowd spilled beyond a large rectangle of small black, red, green and white Palestinian flags staked in the sand to mark the venue for the vigil.

Many attendees wore traditional checked scarves — kaffiyehs — in support of the Palestinian cause and carried photographs of Eygi in her graduation cap. They laid roses, sunflowers or carnations at a memorial where battery-operated candles spelled out her name in the sand.

Several described becoming fast friends with her last spring during the occupied “Liberated Zone” protest against the Israel-Hamas war at the University of Washington. Yoseph Ghazal said she introduced herself as “Baklava,” a name she sometimes used on messaging apps, reflective of her love of the sweet Mediterranean dessert.

Eygi, who attended Seattle schools and graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in psychology this year, helped negotiate with the administration on behalf of the protesters at the encampment, which was part of a broader campus movement against the Gaza war.

“She felt so strongly and loved humanity, loved people, loved life so much that she just wanted to help as many as she could,” Juliette Majid, 26, now a doctoral student at North Carolina State University, said in an interview. “She had such a drive for justice.”

Eygi’s uncle told a Turkish television station that she had kept her trip a secret from at least some of her family, blocking relatives from her social media posts. Turkish officials have said they are working to repatriate her body for burial, per the family’s wishes.

Turkey’s foreign ministry says all measures related to bringing the body of Eygi, who it says was “intentionally” killed by Israeli soldiers, to Turkey have been completed and she is expected to arrive on Friday. She will be buried in Turkey. It said the case is being followed by the Turkish embassy in Tel Aviv and consulate in Jerusalem.

Sue Han, a 26-year-old law student at the University of Washington, only knew Eygi for a few months after meeting her at the university encampment, but they quickly became close, laughing and blasting music in Eygi’s beat-up green Subaru. Eygi would pick Han up at the airport after her travels. Most recently, Eygi greeted her with a plastic baggie full of sliced apples and perfectly ripe strawberries.

Han saw Eygi before she left for the West Bank. Eygi was feeling scared and selfish for leaving her loved ones to travel with the activist group International Solidarity Movement; Han said she couldn’t imagine anyone more selfless.

Eygi loved to connect people, bringing disparate friends together for coffee to see how they mixed, Han said. The same was true when she would bring people together on the beach, and it was true of the vigil, too.

“I was looking around at everybody sharing stories about Aysenur, sharing tears and hugs, and this is exactly what she would have wanted,” Han said. “These new relationships all sharing Aysenur as the starting seed — it’s the legacy she would have wanted.”

Johnson writes for the Associated Press.