Turkish authorities have confirmed that the swimming costume found on a body recovered in the Bosphorus Strait belongs to a Russian citizen who went missing in Istanbul five months ago during an intercontinental swimming competition held in the Turkish metropolis.
An unidentified male body was found yesterday in the waters of the Bosphorus. The body, which was washed ashore, has been identified as that of Russian swimmer Nikolai Andreevich Svechnikov, 30, who went missing during the 37th Bosphorus Intercontinental Swimming Race held last August, Turkish media reported.
The body was found on Monday morning during a routine marine clean-up operation off the coast of Kuruçeşme, in the European district of Beşiktaş. It was the operators themselves who alerted the police after finding the body in the water, so the Istanbul maritime police recovered the human remains and transferred them to the Institute of Forensic Medicine for examination.
According to the Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office of Istanbul, at the time of discovery the body was wearing a swimming costume and was in an advanced state of dismemberment, with head and limbs missing. Subsequent investigations confirmed that the swimming costume on the body matched the one worn by the Russian athlete. Forensic scientists also took DNA samples to complete the formal identification.
Svechnikov went missing on 24 August while taking part in the 37th annual international swim across the Bosphorus Strait, which divides Istanbul in two and separates Europe from Asia. Records and cameras from the race – in which 2,800 swimmers from more than 80 countries took part – confirmed that the athlete had taken part in the competition and set off from the start, but never reached the finishing point, prompting the launch of an extensive search operation in the Kanlıca-Kuruçeşme corridor, with underwater and surface equipment, to try to find the missing Russian citizen. Witnesses who took part in the race then said they saw him swerving off the route.
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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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