The brutal murder of a prosecutor while he was dining in an Istanbul restaurant by a 19-year-old with whom he had a personal dispute has sent shockwaves through Turkish society and sparked a wave of outrage in the country.
According to the Turkish daily Hürriyet, the incident took place on the evening of Wednesday 3 September at around 21:15 Turkish time in a restaurant in the Ömerli neighbourhood, on the outskirts of Istanbul’s Asian side. Ercan Kayhan, a state prosecutor assigned to the Çağlayan courthouse, was having dinner there when Mustafa Can Gül, a 19-year-old with whom he had previously had personal problems, approached him at the table.
According to reports in the Turkish press, a confrontation and a struggle ensued, during which Gül stabbed the prosecutor fatally in the throat, seriously injuring him. Despite the immediate alerting of the emergency services and the rapid intervention of medical personnel, they were unable to save Kayhan’s life.
Following the incident, Gül was identified and arrested by the police shortly afterwards. After making an initial statement at the local gendarmerie headquarters, he was taken to court, where in his statement he confessed to the crime, which he justified as a struggle between the two. The judge ruled that the young man, as the alleged perpetrator of the crime of murder, should be remanded in prison pending trial. Subsequently, the Istanbul Chief Prosecutor’s Office reported that the suspect had at least three other criminal records, and had served two prison sentences for a crime related to gender-based violence and for a harassment offence.
The prosecutor had had a previous argument with his killer
The same Prosecutor’s Office further indicated that the feud between the two was not related to any case previously assigned to the prosecutor, noting that the two had known each other previously and even had photographs together. Apparently, the alleged murderer had previously worked as a waiter at the restaurant where the murder took place – frequented by the prosecutor – and it was during that time that an argument had taken place between the two, prior to the fatal outcome last Wednesday.
According to the lawyer of the prosecutor’s family, who went to the Institute of Forensic Medicine to collect the body to prepare the funeral, Kayhan had previously helped his alleged killer by enrolling Gül in a secondary school and advising him not to take drugs. The young man had applied for a job at the Istanbul restaurant where the brutal murder took place, but the owner had refused to hire him.
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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