Justice Minister Akın Gürlek announced that 3 unsolved murder cases had been solved through work carried out under the coordination of the Faili Meçhul Suçları Araştırma Daire Başkanlığı.
Following the interrogation of Fethi Dağlı, the last person to communicate with Zeynep Yıldırım, who had been missing in Istanbul since 12 September 2022, a woman’s body was found during a site identification carried out on 1 September 2026. Dağlı was arrested again in connection with the identified body.
New findings, HTS records and cell-tower analyses led to the identification of suspects in the case concerning the 2012 killings of İsmail Akın and his 10-year-old daughter Elif Akın in Nusaybin, Mardin. 15 suspects were taken into custody in four provinces, while efforts to apprehend one person are continuing.
7 suspects were taken into custody in the case of Abdurrahman Aysu, who was killed in Akhisar, Manisa, in 2016. Gürlek announced that since 24 April 2026, unsolved incidents in 40 cases involving 46 victims and 7 injured people had been solved.
Why it matters
These cases show that unsolved-crime investigations are being advanced not only through the reassessment of evidence from the past, but also through the joint use of different investigative methods and inter-agency coordination. The fact that methods such as communication records, cell-tower analyses, interrogation and site identification have produced results in different cases indicates that the tools used vary according to the nature of the investigations. The announced total shows that the work is not limited to individual cases, and that cases involving large numbers of victims and injured people are being handled within the same framework. However, the fact that one suspect in the Mardin case has still not been apprehended leaves open questions about what outcomes the judicial process will reach in all three investigations and how the evidence obtained will be assessed.
Background
Bakanı is not a new name in the FikirPilot archive: we have published 4 news reports mentioning this name in the last 90 days; the most recent is dated September 2, 2026.