America’s Cancer Spreads: Two School Shootings in Turkey in Two Days

I wasn’t going to originally write about what happened in Turkey (or Türkiye) because I don’t know much about Turkey, and, Jesus, does America give me more than enough school shooting news to deal with.

That was until there were two school shootings in two days. There’s a line from The Dark Knight Rises where Commissioner Gordon tells Officer Blake, “You’re a detective now. There’s no such thing as coincidences.” I don’t believe that as someone whose life has been shaped by one hell of a coincidence. However, in this case, I think Gordon might have been right. After all, aren’t most school shootings the product of failures and coincidences?

But first, the details.

The first shooting took place on April 14th at Ahmet Koyuncu Vocational and Technical Anatolian High School in Siverek. The suspect was a former student, identified as Ömer Ket, a teenager who walked onto campus with a pump-action shotgun and started firing indiscriminately.

Ket went into classrooms where students and teachers were caught completely off guard, diving to the ground or jumping out windows just to get away. By the time it was over, sixteen people were wounded, including students, teachers, a cafeteria worker, and even a police officer. The shooter ended things by taking his own life when police closed in.

This shooting wasn’t exactly out of nowhere. Ket had been posting threats online in the days leading up to the attack, warning that something was coming. These weren’t vague cries for attention either. He was reportedly telling people to get ready because an attack was on the way. The school took it seriously enough that the principal filed a formal complaint. Authorities picked him up, questioned him, and then let him go after about a day.

There are early indications he had a grievance against the school, possibly blaming administrators for his academic failures. Again, another failure who couldn’t take responsibility for his own inadequacies without resorting to the gun.

Then, just one day later, it happened again.

At Ayser Calik Secondary School in the Turkish province of Kahramanmaraş, a much younger suspect, only 13 or 14 years old depending on the report, came to school armed like he was preparing for a siege. He had multiple firearms, reportedly five guns and several magazines, stuffed into his bag. Those weapons allegedly belonged to his father, a former police officer, who has since been arrested and jailed pending trial.

This shooter entered classrooms filled with younger students and opened fire. Children as young as ten were among the victims. Some kids jumped out of windows to escape. Sadly, others weren’t fast enough. The death toll climbed to ten after one of the wounded died in the hospital, with more left critically injured. Reports differ on how the shooter died, whether he took his own life or succumbed to injuries in the chaos, but the end result is the same.

This shooting wasn’t spontaneous either. Investigators found a document on his computer dated days before the attack outlining plans for a “major operation.” He had been planning this for a while. According to his own father, the boy had an interest in firearms, and the father even took him to a shooting range to teach him how to use them. That decision is now going to follow him for the rest of his life.

Then there’s the part that should make everyone’s skin crawl. This shooter had an image referencing Elliot Rodger on his WhatsApp profile. Rodger, for those who don’t remember or would rather forget, carried out a mass killing in California in 2014 and has since been idolized by incels as being their forefather. Whether the Turkish shooter shared Rodger’s motivations is still unclear, but the reference alone tells you where he was looking for inspiration.

If that wasn’t enough, Turkish authorities have since detained more than 160 people for online posts related to the shootings. Some were accused of praising the attackers, while others were spreading misinformation or even making threats against additional schools. Over a thousand accounts have reportedly been restricted. Think about that for a second. Not just one or two edgelords trying to be shocking, but a wave of people online reacting to mass violence by glorifying it or trying to ride the chaos for attention.

That’s America’s cancer spreading worldwide.

I’m not just talking about guns, although that’s part of it. Turkey has stricter gun laws than the United States, and it still didn’t stop this from happening. Access found a way, whether through a family member or sheer negligence. What’s really spreading is the culture around these events. The obsession, the mythology, and the way these killers get studied, dissected, and, in too many circles, admired.

That brings us to the so-called True Crime Community. On the surface, it looks harmless enough. People are discussing cases, watching documentaries, and listening to podcasts. Underneath that, there’s a darker subset that treats killers like celebrities. They trade photos, share manifestos, argue over motives, and, in the worst cases, start to identify with the perpetrators instead of the victims. That’s where you start seeing overlap with Columbiners, the people who idolize the shooters from Columbine and build their entire identities around them.

Given what we already know about one shooter referencing a past mass killer and the other openly telegraphing his attack online, I would be far from surprised if both of them were steeped in that world. You don’t get to this point in a vacuum. There’s almost always an ecosystem feeding the anger, validating the fantasies, and providing a script to follow.

As for why now, there’s another uncomfortable pattern that keeps showing up. It’s April. Anyone who has followed these cases long enough knows what that means. April has become a kind of high holy month for Columbiners and parts of the True Crime Community, anchored around anniversaries that get treated less like tragedies and more like milestones. Every year, there’s a sense of tension, like something is in the air.

April is always the cruelest month.

(Sources)