A total of seven people have been arrested in connection with the brutal murder of 22-year-old Ayşe Tokyaz, a university student whose body was found on 13 July in an abandoned suitcase on a roadside in Istanbul. The crime, in which the main suspect is a former police officer with whom the young woman had been romantically involved, has also revealed the shortcomings of the system to protect victims of gender-based violence, even after they report it.
Turkish media confirmed in the last hours the arrest of a 7th suspect in connection with the murder of nursing student Ayşe Tokyaz, whose body was found last Sunday inside a suitcase on a roadside near the Mithatpaşa area of Eyüpsultan, on the outskirts of Istanbul. The latest detainee, a 55-year-old man identified as O.K., was intercepted in the Maltepe district and is believed to have collaborated in the crime and was taken to the police station for questioning.
The police investigation has so far been able to establish that, on the day of her death, Tokyaz went to the apartment – located in the Atakent neighbourhood of the Istanbul district of Küçükçekmece – where 38-year-old Cemil Koç, a former police officer with whom she had previously been in a relationship and who is now the main suspect in the murder, lived. There, Koç allegedly killed her and stuffed her body into a suitcase, which he then placed in the boot of his car with the help of an accomplice, and then abandoned it on a road, according to CCTV footage.
The murdered woman‘s twin sister , Esra Tokyaz, told the press that her sister had reported on numerous occasions that her ex-partner was abusing her, and that she herself went to the police station on several occasions to report the violence against her sister “waiting for hours, treated as if I was lying, only to discover that my statements had been passed on to him”. She believes that Koç’s past as a police officer gave him access to these complaints and impunity, without the authorities doing anything to prevent it.
The main hypothesis being used by investigators into the death of young Ayşe Tokyaz is that the alleged killer convinced her to come to his house in Küçükçekmece, after his ex-girlfriend rejected his marriage proposal due to the large age difference between the two. Koç, already arrested and charged by the prosecutor’s office with premeditated murder as the main suspect in the crime, had been dismissed from the police last year and had a past with several criminal records. In 2022 he was already considered a suspect in the death of another ex-girlfriend of his who fell from a 6th floor, in a case that has now been reopened.
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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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