Erdoğan promises tighter gun controls after deadly school shootings

Türkiye will tighten gun-ownership rules and increase penalties ⁠for ⁠owners whose children find the firearms, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ⁠said on Monday after last week's rare, deadly school shootings.

The second of the two separate attacks by ⁠students last ⁠week killed eight pupils and a teacher in a southeastern province of Kahramanmaraş, shocking a nation ⁠in which such school-based violence is very rare.

Erdoğan said the government will also take ⁠additional ‌steps to ‌monitor the internet ⁠as ‌part of its response to ⁠the incidents.

Addressing the nation after a Cabinet meeting, Erdoğan said violence should be tackled through a comprehensive strategy, ranging from family dynamics to digital media exposure and institutional cooperation.

"The more accurately we identify the factors fueling the culture of violence, the more successful we will be in the treatment process," he said.

He said authorities plan to strengthen their presence in online environments by making use of AI, noting that monitoring activities in digital spaces will be expanded.

"We will further strengthen our visible and invisible presence in the dark corners of the internet by also benefiting from artificial intelligence," he said.

On Wednesday, an 8th-grade student opened fire at a middle school in Türkiye's Kahramanmaraş province, killing nine people and injuring 13 others.

Erdoğan said that one of the steps will be to increase cooperation between schools and law enforcement, as well as to develop new working models.

Efforts will be made to improve communication between schools and parents, including enhancing an existing parent appointment system and launching support lines to address digital addiction, he added.

He warned that media portrayals of violence could have harmful effects on youth, saying that presenting perpetrators as powerful or respected figures undermines young people's perception of reality.

He also cautioned that detailed reporting of violent acts and repeated broadcasting of attack footage may increase the risk of imitation among children.