A Turkish court has said restaurant workers at parliament used their positions to sexually abuse and harass four underage high school interns, whose independent accounts described similar conduct, months after the legislature said it had found no evidence that the misconduct was systematic.
Details of the court’s 46-page written ruling were reported Wednesday by the Birgün daily. The document explains the Ankara 57th Criminal Court of First Instance’s July 2 decision to convict four workers and acquit a fifth, setting out the evidence behind a verdict that was first reported nearly four weeks earlier.
The ruling explained in its verdict that the students gave substantially consistent accounts supported by WhatsApp messages, witness testimony and other evidence. The ruling does not conclude that abuse was widespread throughout parliament and is limited to the allegations against the five workers. But it documents multiple victims, similar methods and the use of workplace authority against minors interning at the institution.
The ruling emerged nearly six months after Deputy Parliament Speaker Bekir Bozdağ said in a February 5 response to lawmakers that administrative and judicial investigations had found no concrete evidence that the harassment was systematic, had been covered up or involved more serious acts than those already disclosed. Parliament acknowledged allegations against individual employees and said it had taken disciplinary action against them.
The court convicted four of the five defendants on July 2. Durmuş Uğurlu received a combined prison sentence of seven years, four months and three days for child sexual harassment and child sexual abuse involving unwanted touching. Recep Seven was sentenced to six years, three months for child sexual abuse.
İbrahim Beşlioğlu received two years, three months for sexual harassment of a child, while Halil İlker Güner was sentenced to two years, four months and three days for the same offense after receiving a reduction for good conduct. Ramazan Çetin was acquitted after the court determined that the legal elements of the charge against him had not been established.
All five defendants worked in parliament’s restaurant as cooks or other food-service staff. The court said their roles gave them authority to direct and supervise the students during their internships and placed the minors within an institutional hierarchy in which their ability to protect themselves was limited.
Some students said workers called them into rooms where they were alone and touched their waists, backs, shoulders, breasts or buttocks without consent. The court said their central accounts remained consistent throughout the investigation and trial, despite minor differences in some details.
The ruling said students who interned at parliament during different periods independently described similar conduct. Their accounts not only corroborated one another but were also supported by electronic messages, witness statements and other evidence, the court said.
The court separately examined WhatsApp messages sent by some defendants during and after the internships. It rejected arguments that the messages were friendly or had been misunderstood, saying their content and timing, when considered alongside the students’ accounts showed that they were sexual in nature. The dates of the messages corresponded with the students’ internship periods, according to the ruling.
The defendants denied the allegations. Some said no physical contact had occurred, while others argued that contact was not sexual or that their messages had been taken out of context. The court said those explanations were inconsistent with the other evidence.
The judges did not accept every accusation. Güner was acquitted of one child sexual abuse charge after the student involved said he had not touched her inside a vehicle and the court found insufficient evidence to prove physical contact. He was convicted of repeated aggravated sexual harassment based on electronic communications.
Parliament said it opened an internal investigation after receiving a complaint from the father of an intern on November 19, 2025. A complaint from another intern was added on December 8.
The internal investigation resulted in the dismissal of four restaurant workers, including three cooks and a head cook, while another cook received a wage penalty. Parliament forwarded its disciplinary report to prosecutors and established a seven-member monitoring group drawn from all political parties represented in the legislature.
In explaining its verdict the court said sexual offenses often occur in private without witnesses or camera recordings. It said a minor’s account could support a conviction when it remained substantially consistent and was supported by other evidence.
The court also said children cannot always be expected to recount traumatic events with the detail and chronological precision expected of adults. Minor discrepancies therefore did not automatically make their statements unreliable, it said, while stressing that it had assessed each defendant and allegation separately rather than treating a victim’s statement as sufficient in every case.
