Ankara investigating mysterious death of Turkish student in Germany
Turkey's Foreign Ministry is working with German authorities about a Turkish student's death at a Germany train station. Mert Çokluk's family has said that their son might have been a victim of a murder due to a confidential computer program he was working on, whereas the German authorities ruled the case as a suicide.
Duvar English
Turkey's Foreign Ministry is involved in an investigation into the death of a Turkish student in Germany which German authorities ruled a suicide.
The case concerns the death of 24-year-old Mert Çokluk in the city of Nürnberg. Çokluk graduated from Turkey's prestigious Middle East Technical University (METU) at the top of his class. He had a double major in mathematics and electronic engineering. He then went to Germany for a master's degree.
On Oct. 5, however, he was found dead on the rails of Nürnberg Train Station. German authorities informed Çokluk's family about their son's death six days later, saying that he had jumped in front of the train and left a suicide note.
The family, however, became suspicious of their son's death upon receiving his body from Germany. They noticed that his toe nails were pulled, his body had fractures and it had been battered, leading them to think if their son could have been a victim of a murder.
The father Bekir Çokluk told the Turkish media that his son was working on developing a confidential computer program, which someone might have wanted to get hold of.
The death of the 24-year-old was placed on the agenda of the Turkish parliament after a deputy of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) submitted a motion to be answered by Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu.
"Our judicial offices will investigate a potential connection between his death and the software he was told to be developing," Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said in his answer to the parliamentary motion.
Çavuşoğlu noted that the Turkish Consulate General in Nürnberg had the police report on Çokluk's death, and that the report corroborated with witness testimonies that Çokluk had committed suicide.
Çavuşoğlu added that the Foreign Ministry, Nürnberg Consulate General and the Turkish Embassy in Berlin were all working in collaboration to bring the details of the case to light.