She survived by jumping out of the window, but the words, “You have no escape,” still echo in her mind. Fifth‑grader Fatma İkra Çam is trying to come to terms with the horror she lived through during the deadly shooting at Ayser Çalık Middle School in the Onikişubat district of Kahramanmaraş, where nine people – eight students and one teacher – were killed and 13 others were injured.
Fatma İkra, who was treated at Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam University Health Practice and Research Hospital and later discharged, described in detail how the attack unfolded, how she survived, and how deeply the incident has scarred her.
On the day of the attack, the 5th‑grade student was inside her classroom when the gunman entered the school and began firing. As shots rang out, she quickly dove under a desk, instinctively trying to make herself as small as possible. At that moment, her classmate Sedanur Bahşi positioned herself in front of Fatma, using her own body as a shield. The bullets that could have struck Fatma instead hit Sedanur.
“I hid under the desk and Sedanur lay in front of me as protection,” Fatma recalled. “She saved me. A bullet hit her. She was wounded and taken to intensive care, but now she has been moved to a regular ward. They say her condition is good. If she hadn’t shielded me, I don’t know if I’d be alive.”
According to her account, the attacker entered their classroom and immediately opened fire. Students screamed and scrambled for cover, some hiding beneath desks, others freezing in panic. Amid the chaos, Fatma stayed under the desk, listening to gunshots and the sounds of her classmates crying. The teacher, mathematics instructor Ayla, who was much loved by her students, was among those killed in the attack.
Fatma said that after the gunman left their classroom and moved toward other rooms, some students saw a chance to escape through the window. “I saw two students jump from the window,” she explained. “I realized that was my only way out, so I followed them. I was the third one to jump.”
The fall left her injured. “They tried to catch me below, but they could only hold me a little,” she said. “My foot hurt a lot when I landed. Even so, I’m glad I jumped. While we were jumping, he was still shooting in the classroom next door.”
After her escape, the assistant principal rushed to her side. “The vice principal took me away from the building and helped me get into the school bus,” Fatma recounted. “We were taken away from the school as quickly as possible.”
The most haunting memory for Fatma is not only the sound of the gunshots but the words she heard the attacker say when he came into their room. “He entered our classroom and said something like ‘You have no escape,'” she said. “He didn’t speak Turkish. He spoke in English.”
She emphasized that this sentence has become a recurring nightmare. “My psychology is shattered,” she admitted. “I’m so scared that I don’t even want to go home. I don’t want to go back to school either. The fact that the school is so close to our house affects me a lot. I keep thinking he might come back. That sentence in English plays in my head all the time. It comes into my dreams. Because of that phrase, I don’t want to go to school at all anymore.”
Instead of staying at home, where the memory of the attack feels too close, Fatma is currently living with her grandmother. “I can’t relax at home,” she said. “I stay at my grandmother’s house now. When my mind settles down and I can forget at least some of what happened, then I will go back to school.”
She learned about the full extent of the tragedy only after being taken to the hospital. Doctors and relatives informed her that several of her classmates and her beloved teacher had died. Among them were her close friends Belinay Nur Boyraz and Kerem Erdem Güngör.
“I loved Belinay Nur so much. She was such a beautiful girl,” Fatma said quietly. “Kerem was also very well liked in the class, a funny boy who made everyone laugh.”
Fatma described her friendship with Belinay as especially deep. “We loved each other very much,” she said. “We sat together. We used to make friendship bracelets for each other, buy small gifts, and share everything. We have so many beautiful memories together. It’s very hard for me to accept that she’s gone.”
She also spoke with great affection about her math teacher, Ayla. “Ayla teacher was our math teacher, and we loved her a lot,” she said. “She was always smiling, and she explained math so well that everyone understood. Normally I don’t like math class, but thanks to her, I started to enjoy it. Everyone loved her. Losing her is a huge pain.”
The attack has not only taken lives but also shattered the sense of safety for children like Fatma. For a 5th‑grader, the classroom had always been a place of routine and relative comfort. Now, simply hearing a loud noise or thinking about the school corridor can trigger fear and flashbacks. Nightmares, difficulty sleeping, and refusal to return to school are classic signs of trauma in children after such incidents, and Fatma is experiencing many of them.
Mental health experts emphasize that children who survive school attacks need long‑term psychological support. In cases like Fatma’s, where the child directly witnessed violence, heard threatening words, and lost close friends and a trusted teacher, the emotional impact can be profound. Professional counseling, family support, and a gradual, carefully managed return to daily routines are considered essential steps in recovery.
For families, the challenge is equally heavy. Parents and grandparents must balance the urge to protect the child from any reminder of the event with the need to help them slowly rebuild a sense of normal life. Fatma’s decision to stay at her grandmother’s house is one small way her family is trying to respond to her fears while giving her a space where she feels safer.
At the same time, schools and authorities face the delicate task of restoring trust in the education environment. Security measures, clear communication with parents, and visible psychological support teams can help students see school again as a protected place rather than a site of trauma. Teachers who return to the classroom after such an event must deal with their own grief while supporting students who are frightened, withdrawn, or angry.
The tragedy in Kahramanmaraş has also sparked wider conversations about school safety and emergency preparedness. Questions are being asked about how quickly help arrived, how escape routes were used, and what kind of drills, if any, had been conducted before. For many, Fatma’s leap from the classroom window is a symbol of desperation – a child forced to make a split‑second decision no child should ever face.
Beyond the immediate community, incidents like this deeply unsettle parents across the country. The thought that a place meant for learning could become a scene of horror fuels demands for stronger preventive measures, better threat assessment, and improved mental health monitoring to identify potential dangers before they erupt into violence.
While the focus is understandably on Kahramanmaraş, elsewhere in the country other, unrelated tensions are also playing out in local life. In the Aktaş beach area of the Kumluca district of Antalya, for example, caravanners who were ordered by the local administration to move their vehicles to another location have expressed frustration and say they feel marginalized by the decision. Their dispute underscores how questions of space, security, and public order are being negotiated on many different fronts.
For now, though, the story that resonates most strongly is that of a frightened 5th‑grader who survived by throwing herself out of a classroom window, and who now carries memories no child should bear. Fatma says she dreams of a time when those images fade enough for her to walk back into a school building without shaking, to sit at a desk without checking where she could hide, and to hear the word “math” and think only of her smiling teacher, not of the day the lessons were replaced by gunfire.
Until then, she clings to the memories of friendship bracelets, shared gifts, and the warm encouragement of a teacher who made numbers fun. In the shadow of a sentence spoken in English – “You have no escape” – she and many others are trying to prove the opposite: that there is, in fact, a way out of fear, through justice, support, and the slow, patient healing of a wounded community.