The brutal attack in Kahramanmaraş has laid bare a painful reality: violence in Türkiye has reached even the corridors of schools. It has forced us to face this reality and reminded us of the urgent need to take swift and decisive steps against the rising violence among young people. When looking for someone to blame, some point to families, some to social media, some to schools, and others to the police. Yet the first step in confronting violence is to understand and define the reality before us. We cannot truly confront any case that we cannot name, whose causes we cannot understand, and that we leave in the dark.

So, What Are We Really Facing?

How does a 14-year-old child turn into a killer? Is this merely an individual moment of madness, or is it the outward expression of a much more organized, much deeper, and much more sophisticated form of evil? This article aims to look beyond what is visible on the surface and to reveal not only the tip of the iceberg, but also the dark roots that remain hidden beneath it. For this reason, I will begin by examining the profiles of perpetrators in Türkiye who carried out mass killings after leaving behind manifestos, and by asking whether these profiles share similarities with cases abroad. 

In the West, we more frequently encounter perpetrators who carry out mass killings after leaving behind manifestos. According to our study, two of the 31 cases examined occurred in Türkiye, while the United States ranks first with 17 cases.

You may read evaluation note from here.