4/17/26

A former student who used to attend a vocational school in Turkey randomly opened fire inside, injuring ten students, four teachers, a canteen worker, and a police officer before he decided to kill himself after being cornered by police officers. The shooter used a pump shotgun to put himself out of getting in trouble.

There were online threats, but school shootings are rare in Turkey, so they didn’t suspect anything. The attacker attended the school for one year in the 9th grade, and he shot the school right after spring break on the 14th. The police claimed it as an “isolated incident,” and the attacker had no criminal record prior to this attack. Five civilians were seriously injured while the rest only sustained lighter injuries. Turkish police detained 162 people for posting online about the situation. Hasan Sildak, the governor, says “The individual was cornered inside the building through police intervention and died after shooting himself,” after the police started adding a “comprehensive” investigation into the shooting.

Video footage showed dozens of students running out of the school toward the gate and onto the street, trying to get away from the shooter. Also, media reports said all students were evacuated and police special operations units were deployed after the assailant refused to surrender shortly before shooting himself. Five of the wounded teachers and students were transferred to a hospital in the provincial capital because their conditions were more serious; the governor claims that the motive for the attack still remains unclear because it was documented as an isolated incident.

Although in Turkey people claim that school shootings were really rare, this incident happened and another school shooting happened not even two days after this one occurred. In this latest incident, eight children were shot dead on Wednesday in the city of Kahramanmaras by a fellow student who also killed a teacher. This city in Turkey, traditionally famous for its ice cream, now has a new distinction as the location of Turkey’s first deadly mass school shooting.