Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals upheld on 29 December the life sentences without parole imposed on several members of the family of Narin Güran, whose murder shocked the Turkish society last year, but ordered a retrial of a neighbour accused of aiding and abetting the crime.
Narin, only eight years old, disappeared on 21 August 2024 in the small village of Tavşantepe, located in the Bağlar district of Diyarbakır province in southeastern Turkey. After several weeks of searching and after police pursued various leads and lines of investigation, her body was found lifeless on 8 September in the Eğertutmaz, a river just one kilometre from the village, hidden under rocks and branches. The crime, in which the authorities suspected almost from the outset the involvement of her own family and especially the girl’s uncle, sparked public outrage for months in Türkiye.
As part of the investigation launched by the Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, 12 of the 23 suspects initially arrested were remanded in custody, including the girl’s mother Yüksel Güran, her older brother Enes Güran, her paternal uncle Salim Güran and a local man who worked for the latter, Nevzat Bahtiyar.
The subsequent autopsy would show that the girl was strangled to death on the same day of her disappearance. As to why Narin was killed, neither the testimonies of the convicted members of her family – who insist on their innocence – nor the investigation have been able to establish this clearly to date, although everything points to the fact that the girl saw something that the family tried to hide with her death; some hypotheses have also pointed to the fact that the murder was possibly committed by Narin’s brother, and that her mother and uncle tried to cover it up. The investigation also revealed that another of Narin’s sisters died years earlier in strange circumstances that were never been clarified, as the family refused to perform an autopsy on her.
Supreme Court orders retrial of neighbour who concealed girl’s body
The trial was held in late 2024, where a local court in Diyarbakır concluded that the murder was committed jointly by the girl’s mother, brother and uncle, Yüksel, Enes and Salim Güran; at the hearing on 28 December 2024, the sentence was announced and the three relatives were sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment, which means that they will not be eligible for parole.
Another defendant in the crime, Nevzat Bahtiyar, who admitted to helping by hiding the girl’s body in the river after Narin’s uncle handed it over to him, denied direct involvement in the murder but the Diyarbakır court sentenced him to 4 years and 6 months in prison for the crime of “destroying, concealing or tampering evidence”.
However, in the final court ruling announced today, Turkish media report that the Turkish Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the aggravated life sentences of the three convicted members of Narin Güran‘s family, but ordered Bahtiyar to be retried, this time for the crime of “collaboration in murder“, which could lead to a longer sentence for him. This opens a new judicial phase in one of the most shocking and mediatic crimes of recent years in Turkey.
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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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