Turkey’s Constitutional Court has ruled that the investigation into the death of 11-year-old Rabia Naz Vatan was conducted negligently and that there were irregularities in the investigation process, BBC Turkish service reported.
The May 29 decision was published in the Official Gazette on Monday. The court awarded Rabia Naz’s parents 350,000 Turkish lira (approximately $10,300) in compensation, finding that authorities failed to conduct an adequate investigation into the girl’s suspicious death.
On April 12, 2018 Rabia Naz was found severely injured, lying on her back in front of her family’s apartment in Eynesil, Giresun province, shortly after returning home from school.
Despite being taken to the hospital, she could not be saved. The coroner initially ruled her death a suicide, claiming she had jumped from a height. However, her father rejected the suicide claim and argued that she was hit by a car. He claimed that his dying daughter was dragged from the scene of the accident to the family’s house with the evidence scraped off her clothes and the scene staged to appear like a suicide.
Rabia Naz’s father, Șaban Vatan, said he had been told by locals that a black Fiat Doblo van was seen leaving the area around the time of his daughter’s death. Based on these eyewitnesses and his own investigation, he believed that the van was involved in the incident and that it was driven by the nephew of then-Eynesil mayor Coşkun Somuncuoğlu. He accused the authorities of covering up the incident due to the driver’s political ties. Vatan further alleged that Nurettin Canikli — a senior figure in the ruling AKP — had ordered the cover-up because of his close ties to the Somuncuoğlu family.
The Constitutional Court identified numerous critical failures in the investigation that violated the state’s obligation to effectively investigate deaths. The court found that the crime scene had not been secured and that evidence had not been collected or preserved properly. There was no video or photographic documentation from the scene. The prosecutors handling the case had never visited the scene of the crime, and critical evidence such as the young girl’s bag, diary, socks and clothing had been mishandled. Laboratory tests on her shoes and clothing failed to yield results because evidence was not properly preserved.
Security camera footage from ambulances and hospitals was not requested until 2019, more than a year after the incident, and key witness statements were only collected months after the death.
Following the Constitutional Court’s ruling, multiple officials faced disciplinary consequences. The Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) issued warnings to the prosecutors who handled the case for “negligence and irregularities in the investigation process.”
The Giresun Police Department also imposed disciplinary punishments on several officers, including reprimands for the deputy district police chief, an assistant commissioner and five police officers, while one officer received a one-day salary deduction.
Șaban Vatan said on social media that while they welcomed the court’s ruling, it was far from delivering justice. He said his family was not after compensation but was looking for the perpetrators of his daughter’s death to be penalized for their crime. He demanded that a new investigation be launched.
Vatan’s quest for answers has come at a personal cost. He was recently released from prison after serving 38 days of a one-year, eight-month sentence upheld by the Supreme Court of Appeals for sharing the personal data of Canikli during his advocacy efforts. No on-the-record information exists explaining the reason for his early release.
