Officials say a 14-year-old student attacked a middle school in Kahramanmaras a day after a former student wounded 16 people in Sanliurfa.
ANKARA, Turkey — Two school shootings in southeastern Turkey within about 24 hours left nine people dead and at least 29 others wounded after a 14-year-old student opened fire at a middle school in Kahramanmaras on Wednesday, one day after a former student shot 16 people at a high school in neighboring Sanliurfa.
The back-to-back attacks stunned a country where school shootings are rare and forced officials to explain how two youths reached schools with guns on successive days. Interior Minister Mustafa Ciftci said the Wednesday attack was a personal act, not terrorism, while police detained the younger gunman’s father because the weapons were believed to be his. Investigators in both provinces were still trying to pin down motive, sequence and security failures as families crowded hospitals and school gates.
The first attack unfolded Tuesday in Siverek district, Sanliurfa province, when an 18-year-old former student entered a vocational high school with a shotgun and began firing at random, according to Gov. Hasan Sildak. Ten students, four teachers, a canteen employee and a police officer were wounded. Most were treated in Siverek, but five students and teachers were moved to the provincial capital because their injuries were more serious. Sildak said the gunman later killed himself after being “cornered by police.” Less than a day later, panic spread again in Kahramanmaras’ Onikisubat district. Gov. Mukerrem Unluer said a 14-year-old middle school student arrived with five firearms and seven magazines in a backpack, entered two classrooms of fifth-grade students and opened fire indiscriminately. By late Wednesday, officials said eight students and one teacher had died and 13 other people had been wounded.
Officials revised the Kahramanmaras toll upward over the course of the day, a sign of how chaotic the response remained hours after the shooting. Ciftci said six of the wounded were in serious condition. He told reporters, “This was solely a personal attack,” and said investigators did not see evidence that it was tied to terrorism. Authorities had still not publicly explained whether the 14-year-old died by suicide or was killed during the response. They also had not said why he appeared to target two fifth-grade classrooms, how long he remained inside the school, or whether he singled out any students or staff before firing. State broadcaster TRT said police detained the boy’s father, a retired police officer, for questioning over the guns. Turkish authorities also imposed a restriction on the broadcast of traumatic images and told media outlets to rely on official statements, underscoring the national shock that followed the second attack in as many days.
The two shootings exposed different security failures. In Siverek, the attacker was not a current student but a former one, and Sildak said he had no criminal record. The governor described that case as an “isolated incident” and said the school had been assessed as safe, so no permanent police officer had been assigned there. Local media reports said the former student may have threatened an attack on social media beforehand, but officials had not confirmed that as a motive by Wednesday night. In Kahramanmaras, the issue appeared to be access to weapons inside a family tied to law enforcement. Officials said the younger attacker carried five guns and seven magazines into school in a backpack. That detail sharpened questions about how the firearms were stored, how he got them out of the home, and why nobody stopped him before he reached two classrooms filled with younger children.
Until this week, school shootings were rare in Turkey, which is one reason the pair of attacks landed with such force. Authorities said the Wednesday assault was not terrorism, yet that reassurance did little to answer the practical questions families were asking. Parents wanted to know whether schools in the region had enough security staff, whether warning signs had been missed in either case, and whether officials would change rules on gun storage after the father of the younger shooter was detained. The broader debate also turned to Turkey’s gun laws. The country generally requires licenses for legal gun ownership, but firearms remain accessible to some current and former security personnel. That gap between formal rules and real access moved to the center of the story after investigators said the Kahramanmaras attacker likely used weapons that belonged to his father.
Beyond the casualty counts, the attacks forced Turkish officials to manage fast-moving criminal inquiries in two provinces at the same time. Police and prosecutors were reviewing school security video, witness accounts and forensic evidence from both scenes. In the Sanliurfa case, investigators still had not announced a clear motive or any evidence that the victims were specifically targeted. In Kahramanmaras, the unanswered questions were even broader: authorities had not identified a grievance, disclosed whether the attacker knew all the victims, or said whether the father would face charges. Ciftci said authorities would take necessary precautions, but he did not spell out immediate nationwide measures. For now, the concrete steps were narrower. Police secured the weapons, detained the father, gathered statements from witnesses and survivors, and began the forensic work needed to reconstruct the 14-year-old’s movements through the school.
The human scenes from both campuses gave the statistics their weight. In Siverek, students ran from classrooms and emergency crews moved the wounded through school grounds that had been ordinary a few minutes earlier. One student told Anadolu Agency that he and a friend escaped by jumping from a classroom window. In Kahramanmaras, parents rushed toward the middle school after hearing reports of gunfire, and television footage showed worried crowds gathering outside while ambulances moved in and out. Fifth-grade students in Turkey are usually 10 or 11 years old, a detail that deepened the sense of shock around the Wednesday attack. The short gap between the incidents turned what might have been treated as separate crimes into a national story about school safety. By Wednesday evening, officials were still counting the dead, watching the most severely wounded in intensive care and trying to reassure families that the attacks were not part of a wider campaign.
Where the story stands now is brutally clear: the first shooter is dead, the second shooter is dead, nine people were killed in the second attack, and at least 29 people were wounded across the two days. The next milestones are the formal findings from prosecutors and police, any decision on charges against the younger gunman’s father, and clearer public accounts of motive and security failures in both cases.
Author note: Last updated April 15, 2026.