Lawyer submits 108-person cover-up list in Doku probe

TUNCELI

Ali Çimen, the lawyer for missing university student Gülistan Doku, submitted a 108-person cover-up list to prosecutors in Türkiye’s eastern province of Tunceli. He demanded further operations after only 19 suspects faced legal action.

Çimen said the police queried the 21-year-old student on the national database 41 days before she vanished on Jan. 5, 2020. Former police officer Gökhan Ertok conducted these searches from a local police facility, he said.

“The case is just beginning. We submitted a cover-up list of 108 people. Only 19 on the list faced legal action. We expect the operations to continue,” he said.

Erzurum prosecutors believe Ertok and other officers acted outside the public hierarchy to serve the illegal aims of former Tunceli Governor Tuncay Sonel, he said.

“Our entire effort is to find Gülistan’s lifeless body,” he said.

Doku vanished without a single trace. Her family traveled from Diyarbakır to file a missing persons report. Initial search efforts yielded no results.

Authorities officially arrested 25 people, including Sonel, his family members, Doku’s boyfriend Zeinal Abakarov and several former top officials. Prosecutors accuse them of intentional murder, sexual assault, destroying evidence and depriving a person of liberty.

Recent security operations directly targeted the local police forces. Courts formally arrested nine out of the 19 detained police officers. The key fugitive suspect Umut Altaş was officially detained in the United States. Investigations continue into the deleted hospital records and the wiped mobile phone data of the young victim.