Turkey's Supreme Court upholds jail term for teenage murderer

GAZİANTEP – Doğan News Agency

Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals has upheld the prison sentence of a minor in the murder of a doctor in the southeastern province of Gaziantep.

Murat Geceken, the minor who stabbed Doctor Ersin Arslan to death three years ago, has been sentenced to 24 years in prison after the Supreme Court of Appeals upheld a ruling issued by the Gaziantep 4th Criminal Court for Serious Crimes that ordered a 24-year-jail sentence for the perpetrator.

Arslan, who had been working as a doctor at a public hospital in Gaziantep, was stabbed to death on Apr. 17, 2012, by Geceken, who was 17-years-old at the time. Geceken reportedly killed Arslan because he thought Arslan responsible for the death of his grandfather who had been treated at the hospital and died at the age of 80.

Geceken was taken to court on the charge of “deliberate murder because of one’s public duty,” a charge that carries a life sentence. 

In January last year, the criminal court lessened Geceken’s life sentence to 24 years in prison on the grounds that Geceken was a minor at the time of the stabbing.

The ruling came less than a week after a doctor was killed by a man before he committed suicide in the Black Sea province of Samsun.

Doctor Aynur Dağdemir was fatally injured when Yusuf Demirbaş attacked her and her secretary with a knife in a private hospital in Samsun on Nov. 19. Dağdemir was taken to surgery in the same hospital but she succumbed to her injuries. 

After attacking Dağdemir, Demirbaş jumped out of the window from the fifth floor of the hospital. He was taken to another hospital for his injuries but later died.