"Beat & Release": Psychiatrist's Murderer's Sentence Still a Lifetime Away, Five Years Later

türkçe links to original Turkish article

(Hürriyet Newspaper, 27 April 2023)

                          Swift justice hits a speed bump.

On 2 October 2018 Serhat Tunçdemir (22) shot and killed his 

psychiatrist Fikret Hacıosman (57) in Bahçelievler, Istanbul.   In 2021 

a court in Bakırköy sentenced Tunçdemir to "severe life imprisonment" 

for intentionally killing Hacıosman.  However, the court reduced the 

sentence to just "life imprisonment" (!). 

On appeal, the higher court "Yargıtay" voided the sentence, saying

that Tunçdemir did not devise a plan to kill Hacıosman and that he ought

to be punished for the crime of "deliberately killing someone who was

simply performing his public duty."  (Hacıosman's writing the 

prescription).  

At the hearing of the renewed case in the Bakırköy court, the plaintiff's

lawyer Meriç Eyüboğlu stated that "the suspect went and got a gun,

put his phone on 'airplane mode' and since he knew that there was an

x-ray machine at the front entrance to the hospital, he came in the back

way.  He waited for the doctor, who was having lunch.  All of this shows

that he planned the murder.  We demand that the original sentence be

enforced."

The public prosecutor asserted, based on his investigation, that 

Tunçdemir left school and decided to kill the deceased because he

thought that the medicine the doctor prescribed wasn't working.  

Tunçdemir then went to his home and took his father's gun before

going to the hospital.  Nevertheless, the prosecutor asserted that

Tunçdemir's actions did not meet the criteria for "devising a murder 

plan" but that he deserved to get the "severe life imprisonment"

sentence for "deliberately killing someone who was simply performing

his public duty" (writing a prescription).  

The court postponed the continuation of the case to a later date.