Throughout this book, an answer to a single question has been sought: did Mehmet Çetin die as the official account says he did? When the criminalistic and autopsy reports, the crime-scene investigation records, the clothing examinations, the camera records and the bodyguards' statements in the case file are brought together, they all cry out the same truth: the allegation the court accepted — that "Mehmet Çetin was killed in villa 1782, by the soldiers' 5.56 mm weapons, during the firefight" — is confounded by the very documents in the court's own case file. When an allegation has so many aspects that are contrary to the ordinary course of life and to the material truth, it is, sadly, not possible to accept that allegation rationally, legally or scientifically.
First, where the blood is. Behind, on the balcony of, in front of, and inside villa 1782 — where the firefight with the soldiers took place — there is not a single blood trace belonging to Mehmet Çetin. By contrast, blood carrying the same genotypic character as the blood on Mehmet Çetin's own clothing, and therefore assessed to belong to him, was found at the rear of villa 1751, which the soldiers did not go to at all that night and which has no connection with the firefight. Sadly, the court did not refer to this villa — its door broken, its interior ransacked — at any stage. That the place where none of Çetin's blood was found is accepted as the murder scene, while the place where Çetin's blood is everywhere is entirely disregarded, brings to one's mind the question of whether there is another story that is being kept hidden.
Second, the bullet extracted from a non-existent wound. The conviction was based on a bullet said to have entered Çetin's left knee and stated to have been fired from the accused Şükrü Seymen's rifle. Yet this wound is absent from the general forensic examination report drawn up immediately after the incident, from the external post-mortem examination record, and from the crime-scene footage; according to the İzmir Criminal Laboratory's report, there is not even a hole on the left leg of Çetin's trousers. A bullet was "extracted" from a wound that did not exist, and that bullet was attributed to an accused and a judgment built upon him. Can the foundation of a conviction be an imaginary wound of which there is no trace in the rest of the case file?
Third, the weapon the wounds belie. According to the crime-scene reports, all the weapons the soldiers used that night fired bullets of 5.56 mm calibre, and no pistol was used. But the holes on Çetin's body and clothing — 0.8 cm, 1 cm, 2 cm, and even 7 × 4 cm in size — told another story. According to forensic-medicine sources, at distant range the entry hole ought to be smaller than the bullet's calibre, not larger. Yet the measurements found on Çetin's body point, in all likelihood, to 9 mm pistols, which the soldiers did not have at that moment. Moreover, the clothing examination shows that Çetin was shot in the back and that the bullets remained in his body. These bullets, however, were not extracted and examined at the autopsy. Why were the bullets that would point directly to the killer not investigated during the investigation and prosecution phases?
Fourth, three death stories in twelve days. Mehmet Çetin's fellow bodyguards recount how Çetin died in three different ways within twelve days. On 16 July, İrfan Paksoy says that Çetin was shot at the rear of villa 1782, hours before the soldiers, by persons who arrived by helicopter. On 18 July, the bodyguards' joint record puts on record that a soldier, saying "So you'd fire on soldiers?!", fired two rounds from close range. On 28 July, the head of the protection detail, Murat Bayrak, declares in his statement to the prosecutor that Çetin was shot from a distance, on the balcony, during the firefight. The court, paying no attention whatsoever to the contradiction among these stories, takes the last one directly as its basis. How can a single death, from the mouths of the same witnesses, have occurred in three separate places and in three separate ways? The 00:00–00:30 that Paksoy — who says he was the "sole eyewitness" to the incident — gives as the time of death, set against the statements showing that Çetin was still alive at around 03:00 and Erdoğan's live-broadcast footage from those hours, is a further dimension of the contradiction in the stories.
None of these findings are allegations put forward for the defence. It is the state's own criminalistic laboratories and crime-scene investigation teams that determined the blood was at villa 1751, that recorded there was no hole in the trousers, and that measured that the wounds did not match 5.56 mm. When to all this are added the rejection of the requests for on-site inspection of the scene, the camera records requested late or never, the radios — one of them Mehmet Çetin's — that could not be found, and the unidentified person who called 112 for Çetin saying "I am not a police officer" and whose name does not even appear on the list of those on duty that night, what stands before us is an unfinished investigation.
When the whole case file is looked at objectively, in fact a single question comes to the fore: if Mehmet Çetin was shot not in villa 1782, where the firefight took place, but at the rear of villa 1751, which the soldiers never went to; not with the soldiers' 5.56 mm rifles, but with weapons that make wider wounds; not in a firefight coming from the front, but in the back — then who shot him, and why? The only thing this book has been able to show with documents is that the official account answers none of these questions; and that, moreover, it disregards all the evidence in the case file that could answer this question. The court has refused to see the bullets, the records and the witnesses that could answer this question.
In the light of all this assessment, it can readily be stated that where the book arrives is not a judgment but a demand. The reopening of the case, in the light of the contradictions set out here, is a legal, conscientious and moral necessity. This encompasses a fresh on-site inspection at the scene, with the participation of the accused; the examination by independent experts of the camera records understood to have been blacked out; the investigation of the suspicious 112 records and the missing radios; and, where necessary, the re-examination of Mehmet Çetin's remains, with the consent of his family, by an independent forensic-medicine board. The detailed basis for each of the matters set out is in the documents shown in the relevant chapters and in the Index of Documents.
Şehit Mehmet Çetin deserves to have his true perpetrators found; and his family deserves that this case — closed by declaring that "he was killed in the line of duty in the firefight" — be genuinely brought to light.