TURGUTLU, Türkiye: A teenager opened fire outside a high school in western Türkiye on Tuesday (Sep 22), wounding 11 people before being detained by police, a minister said.
The incident happened around 8am (1pm, Singapore time) in Turgutlu in Manisa province, near the western resort city of Izmir, the regional governor’s office said.
School shootings are rare in Türkiye, although there were two attacks in April on consecutive days in southern Türkiye that sparked widespread anger.
“Eleven students were injured, two of them seriously. The minor who carried out the attack was quickly apprehended and taken into custody,” Justice Minister Akin Gurlek wrote on X.
He said the suspect’s parents and grandfather had also been detained by investigators probing the attack, which saw police and rescuers rushing to the scene alongside panicked parents.
DHA news agency broadcast CCTV footage of the alleged attacker, a young man wearing black jeans, a black jacket and a green top, walking along a street holding what appeared to be a long-barrelled gun.
IHA had a similar image of what appeared to be the same person with a gun, although this time running.
NTV private television said it was a shotgun.
Footage from outside the school showed police wrestling a man in a white shirt to the ground before leading him away, as a woman screamed, with onlookers pressed against the school fence, filming with their mobile phones.
Authorities have opened an investigation into the incident, Gurlek said.
“How the weapon used in the attack ended up in the minor’s hands, the conditions under which it was kept and supervised … and allegations of bullying prior to the incident are all being investigated,” he wrote on X.
The education ministry said all lessons were suspended for the day at the school.
SCHOOL SAFETY
The attack came five months after two back-to-back school shootings that raised public concerns about security in Turkish schools.
In April, a 14-year-old opened fire at a school in the southern province of Kahramanmaras, killing a teacher and nine students aged 10 and 11. The attacker died at the scene.
A day earlier, another teenager opened fire at his former high school in the southeastern province of Sanliurfa, wounding 16 people before taking his own life when confronted by police.
Following the two attacks, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dismissed a deputy education minister and pledged his government would introduce tighter controls on gun ownership.
He vowed school safety would be one of the government’s top priorities.
“When we look at similar attacks around the world, especially in the United States, we see one of the perpetrators’ aims is to terrorise society,” he said.
NEW SECURITY MEASURES
The attack came a day after Education Minister Yusuf Tekin and Interior Minister Mustafa Ciftci signed a protocol setting out security measures for the 2026-2027 academic year, which began on Sep 14.
He said 31,000 school grounds supervisors had been deployed for the first time.
The ministry also carried out a fresh security assessment of schools and assigned police officers to first- and second-degree risk schools, where they remain on permanent duty, he said.
Schools classified as lower risk are assigned police liaison officers who work in coordination with school administrations.
