Could Tavşantepe village be innocent?
Almost a month has passed since 8-year-old Narin Güran was killed on 21 August, yet we still do not know who killed her or why. A piece questioning whether all these prejudices, leaks, and accusations may in fact be helping the real killer; re-reading the murder investigation through Diyarbakırlı master’s student Miham Akkul’s “I accuse” letter.
Almost a month has passed since 21 August, when she was killed, yet we still do not know who killed 8-year-old Narin Güran or why.
So why?
According to television, because the village took a vow of silence and is protecting the killer.
According to some commentators, because the gendarmerie is inadequate in murder investigations.
But what if the biggest obstacle to solving this murder right now is not the silence of the villagers, but the noise of everyone else?
A village was declared sectarian, Hizbullah-affiliated, feudal; allegations of forbidden sexual relations were made about almost everyone in the family; the entire village population was demonized like determined militants who never crack under interrogation, faithful to the Omerta Code; every arrow was directed at the Güran family.
If, after all this, the killer does not turn out to be a member of the Güran family, how will the millions of conditioned people be convinced of this?
Apparently, the biggest obstacle to the investigation right now is this rubbish heap of cultural prejudices, ideological propaganda, and political score-settling broadcast for days from television sets.
Could all these prejudices, leaks, and accusations be helping the killer?
What made me ask this question was the striking letter written, far from the entire propaganda machine, by Miham Akkul — a Diyarbakır-born master’s student in France with no closeness to the neighbourhood or to the family — who has followed all the news, evidence, and statements from the very beginning.
The letter begins as follows:
“For the events that occurred in the place where I was born and raised, I will say ‘j’accuse’ (I accuse). For a mother whose 8-year-old daughter has been murdered has been pushed behind iron bars on the accusation that she sacrificed her daughter to the lust of her unchastity.
The reporter of the channel that is the flagship for the country’s opposition, and his studios in Istanbul, are not seeking the truth — they are practically searching for evidence to accuse Salim Güran. In all these talks and debates, the real culprits are insinuated by squeezing in incest among Kurds, Mustafa Kemal’s relentless struggle against feudalism by making aghas CHP MPs, sects, religious orders.
Even the lawyer of the imprisoned former general chair of the Kurdish movement — caught up in this wind — feels the embarrassment of not having been sufficiently civilized, saying ‘we should question our mentality.’ The DEM Party organizes marches with slogans like ‘Down with Hizbullah’; a video taken by ‘32. Gün’ from Yolaç village in Silvan — where the Hizbullah grave-houses were uncovered — is shared as if it were Tavşantepe village and gets thousands of likes.
Some, unable to stop themselves, claim that Hizbullah’s missing weapons were detected by underground search devices and that, by directives from the deep state, the Narin case was therefore closed.
So what really happened, and who were these people of Tavşantepe village?
When we look at the election results in Tavşantepe village, we see that since 2015 various parties have come first. In 2015 it was HDP, in 2023 İYİ Party, in 2024 AK Party. The village was not Hizbullah at all; in fact Baran Güran, whose family was in custody, had received his sister’s body, and the state and pro-government media shared Baran’s Newroz footage and accused the family of DEM and PKK sympathies. The Hizbullah wing too had posted tweets implying that DEM members had taken little Narin to Syria to be raised for the YPG. Hüda-Par supporters had used ‘whatever befell us came from Europe’ rhetoric in front of those waiting for the body at the morgue.
The Güran family had migrated centuries ago from the Şehrizor region to Diyarbakır. They were not a family with deep political affiliations. They had become quite wealthy thanks to lands that gained value as Diyarbakır grew beyond its walls. The village mukhtar Salim Güran also looked after the fields of those who had migrated to the city, providing various information to everyone. In short, he watched over relatives’ property and played the role of head of the family.
On 21 August, the day Narin disappeared, he had also called Mehmet Şerif Güran in Antalya and told him, with photographs, that his cotton was being attacked by worms. It was even claimed that he made this call to obtain professional help to cover up the murder.”
The letter then looks at the evidence and the claims.
The first claim that drew suspicion onto uncle Salim Güran, taken into custody on 2 September, was a note written under his last Facebook post dated 15 August.
The note allegedly written by gas-station worker Murat Çınar Çatalca made the news in all media on 4 September:
“Salim Güran is the village mukhtar. In HTS records there are both messages and call records with Narin Güran’s mother before and after the incident. On the day of the incident, 15-20 minutes after Narin disappeared, this dog Salim Güran left the village quickly in his own vehicle. He doesn’t even take fuel. He goes into a petrol station and buys wet wipes from the store. The camera footage was taken. I swear I personally handed the camera footage to the gendarmerie commander. I was told not to share anything from the footage. I was even told that if I shared it I would be charged with leaking evidence to the media. This mukhtar was also in contact with Narin’s brother Enes. According to phone records after the incident and the camera footage, unfortunately Narin is either unconscious or being strangled by Salim’s hands lying on the front seat with a dark-brown blanket on top of her. Since the petrol station employees know the mukhtar, there was no doubt. Also, the mukhtar’s phone was off and he came back to the village in the dark two hours later. This time, when he came back, he acted as if he didn’t know anything and put on a sad face crying ‘What happened to Narin?’ to fake grief.”
In the news it was claimed that gas-station worker Murat Çınar Çatalca had gone to the gendarmerie after this note and given a statement.
Then, oddly, other Facebook accounts writing the same claims appeared.
But there was actually no statement, no gas-station worker, and no security camera footage handed to the gendarmerie from the gas station.
In fact, there wasn’t even a Murat Çınar Çatalca who had supposedly shared a suicide note in 2019.
Soon afterwards, both his account and the others supporting him were closed and disappeared.
Let’s read from the letter:
“In the first week after Narin Güran disappeared, a baseless gas-station-worker story was circulated about Salim Güran. Supposedly Salim Güran had killed Narin in the 40-degree August heat of Diyarbakır, wrapped her in blankets in that heat, sat her in the front seat where everyone could see, and gone out to buy wet wipes. This absurd claim was discussed for days; the pump attendant was even said to have been threatened with death.”
But the claim of “Narin’s body wrapped in a blanket in the front seat of Güran’s car,” which had circulated for days in the media in this fake post, came up a few days later in a critical statement.
The most critical turning point in the murder was footage from the security cameras at the gendarmerie observation post near the village.
The footage showed a red car arriving near the riverbed at 15:40 on 21 August — the day Narin disappeared — and parking there, remaining for about 50 minutes.
Searches in the river were intensified. And after three days, on the morning of 8 September, Narin’s body was found inside a sack.
The owner of the red car was also taken into custody: plasterer Nevzat Bahtiyar.
There was now a suspect who had touched the body and could have been directly involved in the murder.
But Bahtiyar, who like other villagers had previously given a statement and said nothing, became a confessing witness as soon as he was caught, and on 9 September, in his first statement to the gendarmerie, he pinned the crime on mukhtar Salim Güran.
In doing so, he used the claims of the fake gas-station worker that he had read for days in the media:
“In his first statement, he claimed that he had run into Salim in the village and that Salim had handed Narin to him in the front seat of the car wrapped in a blanket. Nevzat was making use of the fictitious ‘blanket in the front seat’ story of the non-existent gas-station worker. Of course it never occurred to the media members who had been playing detective for 3 weeks to ask why Salim would put Narin in the front seat — the most visible place — instead of the trunk.”
Nevzat Bahtiyar’s statement at the Bağlar District Gendarmerie Command, beginning on the night of 9 September at 00:52, ended at 03:12.
In this statement, Bahtiyar described why he took Narin’s body and buried it in the river:
“(Salim Güran), pointing at something wrapped in a blanket on the front passenger seat of the car, said, ‘You will dispose of this.’ I came closer to what he was pointing at, and when I looked I saw a motionless person wrapped in a blanket. I was shocked and hesitated. Salim Güran said to me, ‘Think of the family, I’ll give you 200 thousand liras.’”
But the next day, in his statement to the prosecutor’s office, Nevzat Bahtiyar changed this story.
In his hearing statement he explained why he had changed it:
“The statement in my prosecutorial statement, where Salim said to me ‘I killed Arif’s daughter; you take the body and dispose of it. Otherwise I’ll kill you and your family,’ is correct. I had not mentioned this in my earlier statement because I was afraid of Salim Güran.”
There were many contradictions between the two statements given a day apart.
In his gendarmerie statement he had said that they put the body into the sack together with Salim Güran:
“He said to me, ‘Do you have a sack in your car?’ I took out a sack — whose colour I do not remember — from the trunk of my car and gave it to Salim Güran. We took the child wrapped in a blanket and put it together into the sack. Going down by the cemetery, I went to the Villas area (…) Going down on the gravel road by the river I looked for a suitable place. I stopped my vehicle by the river.”
In his prosecutorial statement, however, he said he went to his home and put the body into the sack himself:
“Then I placed Narin’s body alone in the sack at my own residence.”
Again, in his gendarmerie statement, Nevzat Bahtiyar had said he didn’t know whose body was in the sack:
“When we were putting it together into the sack, I didn’t realize whether the body was Narin Güran. When I went down to the riverbed and tied the mouth of the sack, I realized that the body was Narin Güran.”
But in his prosecutorial and trial statement he changed this too:
“Salim said to me, ‘I killed Arif’s daughter; you take the body and dispose of it.’”
Yet, in his 9 September Gendarmerie statement, he had answered the question, “Do you have any information about why Salim Güran killed Narin?” as follows:
“He didn’t say to me why he killed her or that he killed her. But why would he say to me ‘dispose of this body’ if he himself didn’t kill her?”
In his 10 September prosecutorial statement, however, he put forward ambitious theories about why Salim Güran might have killed Narin:
“It was being said that Salim Güran had relationships with Yüksel Güran (Narin’s mother) and his uncle’s wife Maşallah Güran. But I don’t think anyone will give a statement on this. My guess is that Narin saw the sexual relationship he had with one of these women. For this reason I think he could have killed Narin Güran. However, I myself did not see with my own eyes that he had a relationship with one of these women. Furthermore, I would like to state the following. Uğurcan Güran’s wedding was to take place on 25 August. Since most of the men were outside the village to distribute the invitations, I think Salim Güran may have stayed in Tavşantepe village to have such a sexual relationship. The first place Salim Güran called me to was the place Arif Güran used as a barn. There may have been a sexual relationship in that barn. Narin may have seen something at that point.”
So where had this “forbidden relationship,” “Narin may have been killed because she saw a sexual relationship in the barn” claim — which wasn’t in his statement of the day before — come from?
Very simply.
Because the day before this prosecutorial statement, on 9 September, Didem Arslan Yılmaz had told on television about a relationship between uncle Salim Güran and Narin’s mother and the claim that Narin was killed because she saw it.
Nevzat Bahtiyar, after the gas-station worker’s blanket story, had also added this forbidden-relationship claim to his statement.
But these exaggerated and contradictory statements — sounding like Yeşilçam dialogue lines such as “I killed Arif’s daughter, you take this body and dispose of it” — had not made anyone suspicious.
Let’s read again from the letter:
“It never occurred to the media members who had been playing detective for 3 weeks to ask why Salim would put Narin in the front seat — the most visible place — instead of the trunk. Later, Nevzat, changing his absurd statement, was forced to admit that he had taken Narin home and claimed that Salim threatened him not with money but with his family. And he said he guessed that Salim killed her because of the affair with Narin’s mother in the barn. Nobody asked Nevzat why he felt the need to accuse Salim — whom he was already accusing of killing Narin — with a false statement. That is, Nevzat was already saying the worst; nobody could think to ask why, having put forward this worst claim, he could not tell the truth and changed his first statement. It was even claimed that Nevzat, a 30-year construction worker, could not within 40 minutes have left 8-year-old Narin in the river and placed a few stones on her.”
But because Nevzat Bahtiyar gained immunity as a confessor, no one cared about the contradictions in his statements; instead, the villagers were demonized.
After Narin was found, the villagers’ having begun to use keypad phones instead of smartphones was attributed to “their being terribly criminal, cool-headed, organized, taking instructions from a higher mind.”
Yet the truth was very simple: the gendarmerie had confiscated the phones and given the villagers keypad phones:
“While the family and its members were accused of taking an organized strict vow of silence, and the village was deemed appropriate for the name OMERTA VILLAGE, those more traditional said it would be more fitting to put up a ‘DEVIL’S HILL OR THE VILLAGE OF THE MUTE DEVILS’ sign. The impossibility of so many villagers — women and young people — being tight-lipped and resistant to interrogation like the militants of a Marxist organization was not discussed. In a manipulative way, ‘Why aren’t they speaking?’ was endlessly debated on screens. They might have had nothing to say, but who cared about that possibility? That there was no organized murder was clearly visible in subsequent custodial proceedings, since when the mother was asked, ‘Did your daughter get into Salim’s car?’, she said, ‘Yes, she went to the engagement in that car; the car was being driven by Salim’s son Devran but my daughter sat in the back.’ That is, she did not change a detail that could be against Salim. Likewise, Enes had said there was a financial problem between his father and his uncle 2-3 years ago — he wasn’t trying to protect his uncle either; everyone was telling things just as they knew.”
Meanwhile, there had been a change of location in Narin’s DNA found in his car — one of the strongest pieces of evidence against Salim Güran.
According to the questions asked by the gendarmerie in Salim Güran’s first statement transcript, Narin’s DNA sample in his car had been detected on the front-right seat. That is, this was a finding that confirmed the thesis that the body had been carried in the front seat of the car.
But in a question asked in Salim Güran’s new statement, it was stated that “Narin’s DNA was found in the back-right seat, on the inner side of the door.”
İsmail Saymaz explained this critical contradiction in the report on television:
“Where is this DNA? There’s a difference between being on the front-right seat and being on the back-right seat. Because earlier, when Salim’s wife was asked about this, she had said ‘front-right seat.’ When asked whether Narin’s DNA was on the front-right seat, they had given this response: ‘A month ago we went somewhere outside the village for our nephew’s engagement. Hediye was sitting in the front seat. Devran was driving. The children were in the back seat. Narin was sitting in the back.’ Now in this questioning he says it was actually in the back seat, on the inner side of the door. Now if the DNA is in the front, it turns out that Salim and his wife were lying. Or if the DNA is in the back, it turns out that Narin’s mother was telling the truth.”
And we come to the last and strongest piece of evidence.
On the evening of 12 September on Halk TV, Ferit Demir, calling it “the audio recording that will solve the murder,” shared a sentence from a phone conversation between Salim Güran and 15-year-old R.A. who worked for him:
“Salim Güran has a phone call with R… A… shortly after Narin’s disappearance at 15:15. In that call he asks the following — in the audio recording obtained from R… A…‘s phone: ’R…, is the girl alive or dead?’ Let me repeat: ‘R…, is the girl alive or dead?’ That’s it, a tiny audio recording, recorded on R… A…’s phone. This was also entered into the record, and we have verified it from a few different sources. We verified it from at least 4 different sources.”
The next day the transcripts of the phone audio recording came out.
There was no sentence “R…, is the girl alive or dead?” in the recordings.
The conversation was not, as Ferit Demir claimed, shortly after Narin’s disappearance, but at 18:38 — about 3.5 hours after Narin’s disappearance.
The audio messaging, originally in Kurdish, had been translated into Turkish as follows:
Salim Güran: At that corner at the end something of yours has fallen, ha — something belonging to you on the slope at the end, the corner of the slope, stone.
R.A.: Yeah.
Salim Güran: Someone is on the ground.
R.A.: OK, it’s not in my hand yet, it hasn’t died yet.
Salim Güran was asked about this conversation in his new statement:
“I remembered the content of the conversation you mentioned. While irrigating the cornfield I sometimes used a device to draw illegal electricity from the transformer. On the day of the incident I called R.A. so that he would pick up the device that I had left under a stone. The content of the conversation is entirely about that. It has nothing to do with Narin’s death.”
Miham Akkul, in her letter, claims there is a problem with the translation of this audio recording:
“In this dialogue, the disconnection of the word ‘hasn’t died’ at the end from the context was treated as if they were speaking in code, and the media advertised it as the biggest evidence in the file. So what was the truth? In fact this dialogue was around 18:35 between Salim and his 15-year-old worker — it was about an illegal-electricity matter. The original of this 18:35 conversation was in Kurdish; that is, there was an obvious translation error. In Kurdish ‘it hasn’t died yet’ is said as ‘hin nemiri.’ Probably it wasn’t ‘hin nemiri’ but ‘hin neliviri’ (it hasn’t moved yet) or ‘nemirayi’ (it’s not in my hand). Indeed, the Kurdish negative prefix ‘ne’ could easily have been confused with many other words. Another obvious strange contradiction is the disconnection between this incident and Nevzat’s story — Nevzat had already buried the body around 15:30. This cruel, cunning, mercenary, Kurdish, Islamist mukhtar wanted Narin to be killed and disposed of by both Nevzat and a 15-year-old worker. Narin was being murdered in two places at once, continuously buried by feudal Salim’s serfs who had not benefited from the values of the republic.”
The Kurdish-to-Turkish translation of this critical audio recording is being redone by judicial authorities. The new translation may bring out the truth.
In short, what we have is an investigation tangled into something inextricable by ideological prejudices in which the media has played a leading role, by continually leaked information, and by some journalists’ manipulations to pin the crime on a family and a village and not be wrong at the end of the day.
And the killer is benefiting from all of this.
Miham Akkul ends her letter, which began with “I accuse,” as follows:
Back to top“Narin Güran’s story reminds me of films Billy Wilder or Sidney Lumet made in the 50s and 60s about the destructive and lethal sides of the media. Especially the 1952 film Ace in the Hole. In August 2024, Narin was buried by Nevzat Bahtiyar; her family, with the contrast this pitch-black murder would produce, was stoned and buried in the same way by the spite of a hysterical society wishing to feel white. Now, over this burial, will flow not the yellowish stream but years-long hearings ending with the village’s ruin, opening and closing iron doors, hurried bailiffs, money-grubbing lawyers…”