Berkant Gültekin
The murder of journalist Hakan Tosun as he returned home in İstanbul one night deeply shocked many sections of society. The extent of the darkness that has been growing day by day in Turkey in recent years was painfully revealed by this murder and the events that followed.
Tosun was found beaten in Esenyurt, İstanbul, on the night of 10 October, and was taken to hospital. As he had no identification on him, he was registered at the hospital as ‘unknown’. As a result, his family and friends were unable to obtain any information about him for a long time. Suffering from multiple brain trauma and bleeding as a result of the beatings, Tosun passed away on 13 October after being in intensive care.
Camera footage of the murder shows Tosun being beaten by two people who got off a motorbike while he was sitting on the pavement. These images document the journalist being kicked after he fell to the ground. However, the recordings are still incomplete and insufficient. Halk TV reporter Umut Taştan revealed that the images from the workplace camera that best captured the murder were taken by the attackers’ relatives shortly after the attack. Umut Taştan was threatened because of this important news story.
Subsequently, journalist Serdar Akinan brought a striking allegation to light. In his social media posts, Akinan claimed that the footage from the camera that captured the incident most clearly was ‘staged by the attackers’ family and leaked to the media, and that this was done through police channels.’ Akinan also claimed that, due to Tosun being a journalist and the growing backlash, the police met with the attackers’ elders at a gathering and summoned the perpetrators for questioning, saying, ‘The incident has grown, let’s take the young men.’
In line with Akinan’s claims, according to a report by Eylem Nazlıer from Evrensel, although the police identified two perpetrators aged 18 and 24, they called them on the phone and summoned them for questioning instead of arresting them. Approximately six hours after the police call, the perpetrators went to the police station with their lawyers and gave statements. One of the attackers stated in his statement, ‘The police called me in the afternoon of 11 October. They summoned me to the police station and gave me information about the incident. I went to the police station myself.’
Meanwhile, Hakan Tosun’s sister, Öznur Tosun, questioned in a statement made in front of the hospital why she had not been notified for 27 hours and why procedures such as fingerprinting and facial recognition had not been carried out. The family’s lawyer, Hakan Bozyurt, also highlighted the shortcomings despite the two arrests. Stating that there were shortcomings in both the footage and other evidence and witness statements, Mr Bozyurt noted that Tosun’s metrobus footage was not in the file and called on the public to share evidence.
Considering all this, it is impossible not to wonder what would have become of the murder if Hakan Tosun had not been a journalist and if the case had not been pursued so resolutely. In 2025, a murder committed in the middle of the street in Istanbul might have been recorded as ‘unsolved.’ Perhaps it would not even be defined as a ‘murder’; Tosun would be buried somewhere and declared ‘missing.’ After what has happened in the last few days, no one can say ‘something like this would never happen.’ This is the system we live in.
We must never normalise it, never become accustomed to it. We must not consider the brutal murder of a journalist, a citizen, in the middle of the street as a commonplace occurrence. If Hakan Tosun’s murder has been turned into a public issue today, it is the result of the will of the people, especially our fellow journalists, who refuse to surrender to darkness. This was clearly evident at the funeral held yesterday in Nurtepe.
There is a way out of these collective murders, this decay, this web of evil that surrounds us: insistence on humanity and united struggle… The unyielding will of the people will surely bring sunny days to this country. As Maria Eugenia Mendizábal of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo said, ‘Only the struggle that is abandoned is lost.’
Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Hakan Tosun cinayetinin gösterdiği, published in BirGün newspaper on October 17, 2025.
