Turkish prosecutor drops case over assassination plot against HDP MP Paylan

Duvar English

A Turkish prosecutor issued a decision of non-prosecution in the investigation regarding an alleged assassination plot against Peoples’ Democratic Party's (HDP) Armenian lawmaker Garo Paylan.

The suspect, notorious mafia leader Allatin Çakıcı’s lawyer Sinan İnce, confessed their assassination plan against Paylan on social media in 2022. The message read "Mustafa Levent Göktaş! In 2016, you were going to have a gun smuggled into the Parliament to shoot Garo Paylan. You were going to show the instigator as Alaattin Çakıcı and the perpetrator as Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). You made me do the plan, a parliamentary advisor made you stop. Who did you collaborate with afterward? Who punched Republican People’s Party leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and why?”

After the post, an investigation was launched against İnce and retired colonel Levent Göktaş who was a suspect in the assassination of academic Necip Hablemitoğlu.

Referring to Paylan, İnce also said on social media on Aug. 18, 2022, that “We didn't want to make you a hero. Otherwise, we would have knocked you down while you were walking in the Parliament. Do not make yourself a victim by saying 'I survived by chance.’” 

Nonetheless, the prosecutor issued a decision of non-prosecution without even taking the suspects’ statement, Gökçer Tahincioğlu from the online news platform T24 reported on April 7.

In the decision, the prosecutor stated that there was no police record of Göktaş and İnce being “members of illegal organizations” and the Parliament officials did not find any CCTV footage of İnce entering the building with a gun.