'Celebratory Gunfire' & Dance of Death

türkçe links to original Turkish article

(Hürriyet Newspaper, 2 January 2019)


      So many guns...how could he remember them all?!

On 15 August  2018, Bayram Zengin, the village chief of Kırşehir's
Çadırlıhacıyusuf village held a circumcision ceremony for his son.
Attending the ceremony were Rami and Ülfet Boynuince, who had
come from Belgium with their daughter Gamze (20). 

A bullet from the celebratory gunfire (!) during the ceremony hit
Gamze, who was taken to a local hospital.  But before the Jandarma
reached the village all the evidence of the incident had been cleaned
away and Zengin's cousin Taner Zengin took the video cassette
from the cameraman who recorded the ceremony and fled. 

Witnesses from the ceremony noted that Bayram Zengin had greeted
the attendees by firing his gun into the air and continued to fire as
the guests danced.  One of the witnesses, Neslihan Türkyılmaz stated
that "Gamze was hit while she was dancing.  Blood spurted from her
mouth. Bayram fell to his knees in grief and held his head in his hands
as he wept.  His relatives cleaned his face and slapped him in the face
to restore his composure."


                         Now she's dancing IN the stars...

In his statement to the public prosecutor, Bayram explained that
"When Gamze was hit I was attending to guests outside the
courtyard where she was dancing.  I didn't fire into the air."  As
evidence of this, Bayram surrendered his licensed Browning and
Kırıkkale brand guns, neither of which had been fired. 

However (!), when the prosecutor examined videos taken by guests
he noticed that Bayram had a gun with a brown handle in his belt. 
Neither of the guns that Bayram surrendered had brown-colored
handles.  Bayram was arrested and charged with not only Gamze's
murder but with inciting fear and panic, as well.  Taner Zengin
was charged with destroying evidence and firing his gun and his
brother Murat Zengin was charged with having an unclicensed
firearm in his possession.

The first hearing in the case was held in court in Kırşehir on 24
December.  Gamze's family's lawyer Kadriye Ünler noted that
"two gun clips, 151 empty shell casings and 6 hunting bullets were
found at the scene.  It was more like a war zone than a circumcision
ceremony."