Hablemitoğlu assassination: Prosecutor gone... Non-prosecution decision overturned... Çakır arrested

Five days ago marked the 23rd anniversary of the assassination of academic and author Assoc. Prof. Dr. Necip Hablemitoğlu, who was killed in front of his home.

This murder, committed on December 18, 2002—just two months into the AKP government—remained unsolved until Nuri Gökhan Bozkır, a former captain who had served in the Special Forces Command (ÖKK), was brought to Turkey from Ukraine in a special operation. Erdoğan himself announced that Bozkır had been brought back, describing it as "proof of their determination to shed light on past unsolved murders."

What followed is well-known; as a result of the investigation, it was alleged that the murder was committed by a criminal organization led by retired Colonel Levent Göktaş, a former member of the Special Forces, on behalf of "FETÖ" and for money.

Without going into the long details of how the trial, which began in the Ankara 28th High Criminal Court in February 2023, has progressed, let us simply state this:

When retired Colonel Tarkan Mumcuoğlu, who was alleged to be the "trigger man" of the assassination, proved with witnesses and photographs during the May 2023 hearing that he was in Kazakhstan on the day of the murder, all defendants were released under judicial control measures, including a travel ban. The court that issued the release order requested that the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor's Office conduct a new investigation, noting that the perpetrator could be someone else, but this was rejected.

The person who rejected it was Zafer Ergün, who both prepared the indictment and served as the prosecutor for the trial.

During the trial process, other allegations also came to the fore; such as the prosecution hiding important evidence, misleading the court, and violating the confidentiality of the investigation...

The most significant of the "evidence hiding" allegations was the failure to investigate whether the people present at the conference Necip Hablemitoğlu gave in Eskişehir four days before he was killed were the same people thought to have followed him while he was shopping at Migros just before he was killed. This is because the expert appointed by the court had determined: "There is no similarity between the people in the footage and the defendants on trial, but there is a similarity between the three people at the Eskişehir conference and those at Migros."

The court requested an investigation into those three individuals. However, Prosecutor Zafer Ergün again issued a decision of non-prosecution (KYOK), stating, "The trial must be conducted in accordance with the evidence identified in the indictment regarding the defendants and the evidence to be identified during the trial."

As a result of the objection by Ersan Barkın, the lawyer for the Hablemitoğlu family, the Ankara 9th Criminal Judgeship of Peace overturned this decision on December 27, 2024, on the grounds that it was "based on an incomplete investigation" and stated that the individuals in the footage must be investigated.

On May 30, 2025, Prosecutor Zafer Ergün issued a second decision of "non-prosecution," reporting that "the identities of the individuals who did not make purchases with a card at the Migros market could not be determined, and that a match between the individuals in the market and the Eskişehir conference recordings could not be made due to the low resolution of the footage."

The Hablemitoğlu family's lawyer, Ersan Barkın, and one of the defendants, Levent Göktaş, also objected to this decision.

THESE EVENTS OCCURRED IN THE LAST 6 MONTHS

While the result of the objection was awaited, the following occurred in succession:

At the hearing on June 27, 2025, while the Hablemitoğlu family's lawyer and the defendants were requesting an expansion of the prosecution, Prosecutor Zafer Ergün requested that the file be referred to the Prosecutor's Office to present his final opinion (mütalaa). Accepting the prosecutor's request, the court adjourned the hearing to October 20-24 to receive defenses against the final opinion.

Twenty-one days later, on July 18, Prosecutor Zafer Ergün presented his final opinion, requesting that defendants Levent Göktaş, Tarkan Mumcuoğlu, Nuri Gökhan Bozkır, Fikret Emek, Enver Altaylı, and Aydın Köstem be sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment, and that Mehmet Narin be punished for membership in an organization.

When October 20 arrived, since the objections to the "non-prosecution decision" had not been concluded, the defendants' defenses against the final opinion were not taken, and the hearing was adjourned to December 8.

Meanwhile, with the HSK (Council of Judges and Prosecutors) decree published on November 27, Prosecutor Zafer Ergün was reassigned from Ankara to Aksaray.

While the court's prosecutor, not Zafer Ergün, attended the hearing on December 8, defenses were again not taken because the objection to the KYOK decision had not been concluded, and the hearing was left to January 30-February 2, 2026.

In that last hearing, while the defendants and their lawyers again criticized the departed Prosecutor Zafer Ergün with harsh expressions and asked the new prosecutor to prepare a new final opinion, Nuri Gökhan Bozkır made very striking allegations. After explaining that this investigation was "conducted with two false witnesses like Zihni Çakır and Abdurrahman Şimşek" and that "Zihni Çakır himself announced that Prosecutor Zafer Ergün was a ByLock user," Bozkır alleged that a person he stayed with in his prison ward said that Zafer Ergün was the "FETÖ imam of Kayseri."

Just one day later, Prosecutor Zafer Ergün announced from the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor's Office WhatsApp group that he had "resigned from his 18-year career as a Public Prosecutor to take care of his father's health problems."

CRIMINAL COMPLAINT AGAINST BOZKIR

There are other new developments.

For example; Prosecutor Zafer Ergün, who did not file any criminal complaint against journalist Zihni Çakır when he was heard as a witness at the hearing on May 15, 2023, despite saying "it was alleged that he used ByLock," filed a criminal complaint on December 18 against Nuri Gökhan Bozkır, who voiced those allegations at the December 8 hearing, for "targeting public officials involved in the fight against terrorism." On the same day, the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor's Office requested the transcript and SEGBİS (Audio and Visual Information System) records of that hearing from the 28th High Criminal Court.

KYOK DECISION OVERTURNED

The most important development concerned the objection to the last KYOK decision given by Prosecutor Zafer Ergün.

On December 12, the Ankara 9th Criminal Judgeship of Peace, after recalling its previous decision, overturned this KYOK decision as well, finding it "unlawful because it was based on an incomplete investigation."

THE ARREST OF ZİHNİ ÇAKIR

And the final development; as in the Ergenekon conspiracy process, journalist Zihni Çakır, who came to the fore in this case as well, was detained three days ago and arrested on the same day.

If we summarize Zihni Çakır's importance in this case; it was seen that his statements were taken as the basis in the indictment and the final opinion... So much so that Levent Göktaş's lawyer, Ali Soykan, requested that judicial control be applied to Zihni Çakır because there was a "strong suspicion of crime" even before Zihni Çakır was heard as a witness. The presiding judge also said that they would make an evaluation regarding this with an interim decision... When Zihni Çakır was heard as a witness in court; after persistent questions from the then-presiding judge, the defendants, and their lawyers, he confessed that he provided the contact between Prosecutor Zafer Ergün and Nuri Gökhan Bozkır in Ukraine, that he worked on the file together with the Prosecutor, and that he forwarded some information from the file to Bozkır via WhatsApp, in other words, that he "violated the confidentiality of the investigation"... In addition, he explained that when he saw the document stating that Prosecutor Zafer Ergün used ByLock and when Nuri Gökhan Bozkır was detained in Ukraine, he contacted the then-Minister of Justice Abdulhamit Gül via WhatsApp out of concern that "FETÖ members might be behind this and that his life was in danger," and that with a letter he wrote on December 19, 2019, he called on Abdulhamit Gül and the then-Minister of Interior Süleyman Soylu, saying, "Ensure my safety due to the Hablemitoğlu investigation. Do not put the state in a new debt of honor."

Returning to Çakır's arrest;

We do not know whether it has anything to do with the Hablemitoğlu case. It was written and drawn that he was detained following a post in which he criticized Minister of Justice Yılmaz Tunç, whom he had met two days ago, after Fenerbahçe President Sadettin Saran was called to testify regarding a drug investigation.

While Minister of Justice Yılmaz Tunç says "we are a state of law" almost every day, isn't it strange that Çakır was arrested due to a post that was in the nature of "be careful"?

What is even stranger is that Tunç has still not denied the allegation that the arrest was made because of him, and that it is being talked about that Çakır's proceedings were carried out not at the KOM (Anti-Smuggling and Organized Crime Department) but at the TEM (Anti-Terror Department), the unit that deals with "FETÖ."

WHAT WILL THE COURT DO?

Returning to the Hablemitoğlu assassination case; as a result of the investigation that lasted for years and the trial that has been going on for about 3 years, this important unsolved murder has literally turned into a labyrinth instead of being solved.

Since the Ankara 9th Criminal Judgeship of Peace overturning the KYOK decision means "there are other perpetrators in this assassination"; it is unclear whether this investigation will finally be carried out through the Eskişehir conference and Migros footage or not. If the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor's Office decides to expand the investigation, the current trial will be further prolonged; if it does not, the case will be concluded, but these major doubts will remain behind.

Müyesser YILDIZ

December 23, 2025