An İstanbul court has ordered the release of a man who physically assaulted Özgür Özel, leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), during a public appearance earlier this year, after sentencing him to one year in prison, Turkish Minute reported, citing the Anka news agency.
Selçuk Tengioğlu, 66, slapped Özel in the face on May 4 as he left a memorial ceremony at İstanbul’s Atatürk Cultural Center held ahead of the funeral of a pro-Kurdish lawmaker who had died. Witnesses said the assailant shouted, “We are the grandchildren of the Ottomans,” before hitting the politician.
Özel was uninjured but was seen clutching his head as security personnel shielded him from further harm.
Tengioğlu was detained the same day and arrested on May 6. Prosecutors charged him in June with “intentional injury of a public official,” seeking a sentence of up to four-and-a-half years.
A court later sentenced him to 12 months in prison but ordered his release, citing the time he had already served in pretrial detention, Anka reported.
Prosecutors said the attack was carried out by Tengioğlu alone and that he had no ties to any organization.
The incident has come as a shock to many, not only because of the attack on a senior opposition figure but also due to revelations about Tengioğlu’s past. Reports emerged that in 2004 he killed two of his children and wounded a third in the southern province of Hatay, though he was conditionally released in 2020. A fourth child survived by jumping from a balcony.
At the hearing Özel’s lawyer, Sedat Aslantaş, argued the act went beyond an assault on an individual. “This attack did not endanger my client’s life but it threatened public peace and order,” he told the court, adding that Tengioğlu had planned the assault in advance.
“He came to the scene, waited for hours and made preparations. Considering his criminal record, he should have been given the harshest punishment possible,” Aslantaş said.
After the verdict Aslantaş told reporters that Tengioğlu’s past conviction for killing two of his children in 2004 should have worked against his release.
Özel, who became CHP leader in November 2023, has denounced political violence and accused the government of failing to adequately protect opposition politicians.
In 2019 then-CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu was also attacked during a soldier’s funeral in Ankara province.
CHP parliamentary group deputy chair Gökhan Günaydın also condemned the ruling, saying those who enabled the attack had not been held accountable.
“The thug who attacked our chairman Özgür Özel has been released,” he wrote X. “But no step was taken against those who let him through the barriers and incited him, just as nothing was done to the people who organized the earlier attack on former chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.”
