[10][11][12] Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) received information about activities in the region on the night of December 28, which was supplied by United States intelligence services[13] based on a U.S. drone footage.

[14] The TAF and Yaşar Güler reviewed the footage from the unmanned aerial vehicles flying over the terrain and evaluated the smugglers as a group of militants of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

[10] Servet Encü stated that generations of people in his village and neighboring settlements had been in the smuggling business due to financial need.

[10] The funeral of the victims, following an autopsy performed at the Uludere hospital, took place at a newly established cemetery between the villages Ortasu and Gülyazı.

The funeral convoy, formed by about 1,000 vehicles and attended by a crowd of about 10,000 people, covered the distance of 20 km (12 mi) between the district center and the cemetery in one hour.

[22] District governor Naif Yavuz, who was at the autopsy and the funeral service, later paid a condolence visit to the houses of the relatives of the victims.

Meanwhile, Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) leader Selahattin Demirtaş released a statement claiming that "It’s clearly a massacre of civilians, of whom the oldest is 20," but he called for Kurds to respond through democratic means.

[18] The Republican People's Party (CHP), Turkey's largest opposition party, sharply criticized what they perceived as the government's attempt to portray the incident as understandable collateral damage, with Kurdish CHP deputy Sezgin Tanrikulu saying that "If there are some who think that death of these innocents is just a natural result of the struggle against terror, it means that Turkey has already been divided on moral grounds.

[27][28] In a MetroPOLL public opinion survey of 1,174 Turkish people, 14.5% said the state was ultimately responsible for the deaths, 11.5% said the smugglers, 9.5% said the PKK, 5.4% said the prime minister of the government and 4.9% said it was the General Staff.

[33] During the hearings, opposition MPs complained that the Ministry of Defence declined to answer questions and used the confidentiality order taken by the prosecutors office as an excuse.

Prosecutors admitted to being delayed while waiting for documents they had demanded from the office of Chief of General Staff, which were needed before they could interrogate military personnel.

[44][45][46] Previously, on May 23, 2012, then Minister of Interior İdris Naim Şahin stated that the authorisation for the operation had been given at the air forces command centre in Ankara.

[48] In January 2012 the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) filed a lawsuit against the Turkish government at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

[51] On June 28, 2012, six months after the airstrike, NGO members and relatives of the deceased who intended to protest at the site of the deaths were subjected to police violence and were dispersed by pressurised water cannons.