Young Turkish woman commits suicide after rapist assailant released from police custody

Duvar English

A young Turkish woman has committed suicide one day after authorities released the suspect whom she said had raped her.

On Aug. 6, the 18-year-old Eda Nur Kaplan applied to the police and reported that she was raped by two people on July 30. One of the suspects, named Mehmet A., was initially detained but was later released from police custody on the grounds of “lack of evidence,” whereas the other suspect, named Yusuf G., was being sought.

In her testimony to the police, Kaplan said that the two suspects had taken her to a hotel when she was semi-conscious and sexually assaulted her. She said she could not stop them since she had partially lost her consciousness. 

Kaplan later went into a depression and was crying all the time, saying "No one will believe in me," a friend of the young woman told media outlets. 

One day after Mehmet A.'s release, Kaplan jumped off from her 15th-floor apartment and died in the capital Ankara.

Before dying by suicide, Kaplan sent a message on her mobile phone to her mother reading: “Mother, your little daughter can no longer bear some things. They have expended your daughter. She could not tell of anything to anyone. She endured in silence but that accumulated very much.”

“She cannot bear anymore. She has no more belief that anything will be good again. I now go by saying 'Rather than it hurting every day, let it hurt for one day.' Give your blessing,” she further wrote.

After Kaplan's message was shared on social media, many users started to share a hashtag calling for justice for the young woman under #edanuricinadalet (Justice for Eda Nur).

“Eda Nur, who was raped by two people in Ankara on July 30 and could not bear the release of the rapists after the complaint, put an end to her life! This is not suicide but murder! The male state that protects not women but rapist men is the perpetrator of Eda Nur's murder,” Ankara Women Platform said in a statement, also sharing Kaplan's message to her mother. 

Meanwhile, the Family and Social Services Ministry released a statement saying that it was closely monitoring the investigation concerning Kaplan's death and will apply to be directly involved in the judiciary process of her death should a criminal case be launched.

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