The famous fugitive secret witness wants to come to Turkey!..

Interesting developments are taking place in the case that erupted at the Ankara Police Department over a "secret witness" scandal—a case that MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli, a partner in the People's Alliance, described as a "coup against the government," which frequently mentioned the name of former Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, and which concluded with Bora Kaplan being sentenced to 68 years in prison—but no one seems interested anymore.

For instance, the INTERPOL search warrant and red notice procedures for Serdar Sertçelik—who fled abroad while serving as the secret witness codenamed "M7," claimed that the police officers who carried out the Bora Kaplan operation asked him to provide the names of certain politicians, and was most recently caught and arrested in Hungary—have been lifted. Sertçelik, whose asylum request in Hungary was reportedly accepted, submitted a wet-signed and fingerprinted petition to the Ankara 1st Assize Court of Appeals, where appeals will be heard, stating that he could attend the hearing scheduled for June 26 if the arrest warrant against him is lifted or converted into a warrant for the purpose of taking a statement.

For example, in the investigation launched following the criminal complaint filed by Bora Kaplan and other defendants in the case against the police officers conducting the investigation, the other secret witness in the case, codenamed "Ü5," was personally unmasked by the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor's Office.

For example, it emerged that the "arrest, search, and seizure report" for Bora Kaplan contained statements that did not reflect the truth.

Let us break all of these down in order.

The Interested Parties Have Moved On, But Sertçelik Has Not

Serdar Sertçelik, codenamed "M7," was both a "secret witness" and a defendant in the case. He was supposed to be heard in court as a secret witness, but he fled. After fleeing, he denied the statements he had given and accused the police. Following this, his witness protection measures were lifted, an international arrest warrant (red notice) was issued for him, and his extradition from Hungary was requested.

However, the Ankara 32nd High Criminal Court, despite all objections from the defendants and their lawyers, accepted Serdar Sertçelik's statements given as a secret witness as the basis for the verdict, considering them to have been given within the scope of "effective remorse," even if their "evidentiary value had weakened."

It was upon this that Serdar Sertçelik sent a wet-signed and fingerprinted petition to the Ankara 1st Assize Court of Appeals, where the appeals will be heard, via his lawyer last Thursday. In his petition, Sertçelik stated in summary that "the constructs and assumptions made in the reasoned decision are completely unreal," that he did not have the slightest statement regarding effective remorse in his testimony taken either as a suspect or as a secret witness, and that he rejected these statements, adding:

"Although I officially requested through my lawyer that these statements not be used as a basis for the verdict, I cannot understand why they were. My statement taken as a secret witness was entirely prepared at the Police Department and signed under duress. My testimony was absolutely not taken in the presence of Prosecutor Mustafa Kaya; the document was prepared using a copy-paste method. I sent a letter to the 32nd High Criminal Court while I was still in prison in Hungary. But somehow, this letter of mine was not recorded. After my detention ended, I sent a second letter, and I saw that this was not recorded either. For this reason, I am sending this third letter from Hungary to Germany to be delivered to my lawyer in Turkey. What is written in this letter is the truth. I am also affixing my signature and fingerprint to the bottom. You can verify that I wrote it from my fingerprint."

His lawyer, who submitted this petition to the 1st Assize Court and requested that it be added to the file, emphasized that while the INTERPOL search warrant and red notice procedures against Sertçelik had been lifted, the arrest warrant still prevented him from returning to Turkey, causing him victimization and hindering the judicial process, and made the following request:

"Considering that the red notice and INTERPOL search warrants in Hungary have been lifted, we request that the arrest warrant be lifted; if your Court is of the opposite opinion, we request that a warrant be issued for the purpose of taking a statement, in which case we declare that we can have the client present at the hearing to be held on June 26."

What Happened in the Second Secret Witness Incident

Let us come to the second secret witness of the case, codenamed "Ü5." He could not be heard in court either. Or rather, this is what happened:

Before the session in which he was to be heard, the Ankara Police Department informed the Court that "efforts could be made to reveal the identity" of this secret witness, so he was heard in a special session where the defendants and their lawyers were not present. However, after the police officers who carried out the operation were detained and arrested due to Serdar Sertçelik's flight, he also applied to the court to withdraw from being a secret witness, claiming that his statement had been taken under duress and threat.

The court initially did not want to accept the petition submitted by "Ü5" on the grounds that his real identity would be revealed. Then, upon the warning of the Prosecutor's Office, a copy of the petition was placed in the Court's safe, and the original was sent to the Witness Protection Bureau of the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor's Office.

Despite all this, the Court, as it did with Serdar Sertçelik, based its verdict on "Ü5"'s statements on the grounds that they were "consistent with Sertçelik's statements and other evidence in the file" and that "the criminal organization attempted to change his statements by unmasking him."

Let us quote a few sentences from "Ü5"'s complaint petition:

"I was detained in front of my house on November 5, 2023. I was taken into the Police Department without my identity being registered... For 3 days, the police prepared my statement and tried to make me memorize it... When we went to the courthouse, they took us to the office of the prosecutor whose name was written on the door as Mustafa Kaya. The flash drive prepared at the Police Department was given to the clerk next to the prosecutor. The prosecutor said, 'There are some problematic names in the statement; these need to be removed.'... Before the court, the police gave the other secret witness's statement and said, 'Pay attention to the Berke Kırıcı incident, look, that's important, we marked it. This part is about Süleyman Soylu and Sadık Soylu. Work hard on this part, memorize it. Definitely mention these names in court. Tell it as if you know the event.' But in court, because I was afraid to say Süleyman Soylu's name and commit slander, I only referred to him as 'a minister's nephew'."

This Is How "Ü5" Was Also Unmasked

After this information regarding "Ü5," let us look at a recent decision.

Bora Kaplan and some defendants filed a criminal complaint with the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor's Office against the police officers conducting the investigation, alleging "misconduct in office, torture, threat, blackmail, exceeding the authority to use force, intentional injury, insult, forgery of official documents, and violation of the confidentiality of the investigation."

The investigation conducted upon these criminal complaints was concluded 9 days ago, on May 9.

The Prosecutor's Office, while deciding that it had no authority or duty to re-investigate and evaluate evidence regarding a criminal act that is in the prosecution stage, pointing to the case at the Ankara 32nd High Criminal Court and the cases opened against the police officers for most of the accusations, did the following:

It placed the petition submitted by secret witness "Ü5" into this file with his "complainant" status, that is, with his real identity, and in a sense, unmasked him!..

Did Bora Kaplan Resist?

Let us share some of the remarkable findings in this investigation, which resulted in a blanket "no grounds for prosecution" decision.

For the period when Bora Kaplan and the other defendants were in custody, it was reported that "the recording duration of the camera recording devices at the Anti-Smuggling and Organized Crime (KOM) department is 1 month retrospectively, and therefore there are no records showing the dates specified."

In response to the allegations that Kaplan was detained at Esenboğa while being beaten and subjected to insults, and that the "arrest report" was drawn up in a way that did not reflect the truth; while recalling the provisions in the Law on Police Duties and Powers, stating that "Force may be used without warning, taking into account the nature and degree of resistance," the following findings in the expert report regarding the video footage of the arrest process were included:

- "It is seen that the video recording captures different angles, the number of people present there is high, they speak at the same time from time to time, the people speaking are reflected in the camera's field of view from time to time, and some of the people speaking are not in the camera's field of view; there are words that cannot be understood due to simultaneous conversations from time to time, proximity/distance to the device recording the conversations, sound clarity, and ambient noise"...

- "It is stated in the arrest report that the suspect Bora Kaplan resisted verbally by saying, 'I am not getting out of the vehicle,' and no evidence could be found in the video recording of the arrest process as to whether Bora Kaplan used this phrase... Again, it is stated in the arrest report that 'the detention order and search warrant issued against them were read to the suspects' faces by showing police badges and they were invited out of the vehicle,' whereas in the video footage, the arrest process was carried out by stopping the vehicle and immediately taking the suspect Bora Kaplan out of the vehicle and laying him on the ground; in this respect, the statement written in the arrest report and the footage are inconsistent"...

- "It has been determined that writing statements that do not reflect the truth regarding 'the suspect being reminded of his rights and being informed about the investigation' in the 'Arrest, Search, and Seizure Report' would not produce a legal result against the complainant Bora Kaplan, that the forgery that would not change the result is in the nature of a useless forgery, and that there is insufficient evidence to open a public lawsuit regarding the crime of forgery of official documents"...

This is the latest situation in the Bora Kaplan case, which dominated the country's agenda throughout last year. Let us see if Serdar Sertçelik, who has been talked about for months, will be given the opportunity to come to the hearing in June?

Müyesser YILDIZ

May 18, 2025