The reopening of a six-year-old cold case involving a missing university student has reignited the main opposition’s anger towards Justice Minister Akın Gürlek, as the recent reports show then–Tunceli governor Tuncay Sonel played a critical role in covering up the case of the missing young woman Gülistan Doku.
Arrested on April 16, former police officer Gökhan Ertok said that the SIM card belonging to Doku was given to him by Şükrü Eroğlu, the security guard of governor Sonel and stated that Sonel had instructed that key data in Doku’s WhatsApp correspondence and social media messages be deleted. He accepted deleting them.
Now, the suspicions are focused on the governor's son, who is under detention, Mustafa Türkay Sonel, instead of Doku’s former lover, Zeynal Abarakov. Sonel rejected the claims that his son knows Doku and there are no reports about the detention of the governor Sonel or his dismissal from the duty as he is still an inspector in the Interior Ministry.
Doku, a university student in Tunceli, disappeared on Jan. 5, 2020. Her mobile phone signal was last spotted near a local dam, but underwater searches yielded no results. The case went cold in 2022. However, her family never stopped looking for their daughter. The case reopened when Ebru Cansu was appointed as Tunceli Chief Public Prosecutor in June 2024. She immediately formed a special team to investigate the Doku case. The Tunceli Chief Public Prosecutor's Office recently detained 13 suspects, including Doku’s former boyfriend, his stepfather, a former police officer, and the governor’s son.
ÖZEL ACCUSES GÜRLEK OF POLITICAL GAIN
The breaking news on the reopening of the file was attributed as a success story of Justice Minister Gürlek on April 13 although a minister does not have the right to open a file.
The next day, CHP Chair Özel revealed that Furkan Torlak, the unofficial press advisor of the minister Gürlek — who was distanced from the Communication’s Directorate soon after the drug investigation in which Habertürk TV’s editor-in-chief Mehmet Akif Ersoy was arrested — instructed media outlets to highlight Gürlek’s success.
Özel blamed Gürlek for trying to take all the credit for the reopening of the investigation into the disappearance of Doku, although the prosecutor deserves the credit.
Özel said Torlak circulated a note to the media suggesting the probe was restarted solely under Gürlek’s personal orders.
“This note is not against me; it is against you,” Özel said during the group meeting, addressing former justice ministers Abdülhamit Gül, Bekir Bozdağ, and Yılmaz Tunç. He accused Gürlek of insulting the professional ethics of his predecessors by implying they had suppressed the case. “This is a note that attacks your professional and political morality. Stay silent and let me see your reaction,” Özel added.
Gürlek, whose appointment to the ministry followed his controversial role as the chief prosecutor in cases against Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, responded to the allegations during an AKP group meeting on April 15. Gürlek admitted that he did not personally issue the order to start the investigation but defended the renewed focus on the file.
“It does not matter what the profession or duty of the individuals involved is,” Gürlek stated. He confirmed that the Tunceli Chief Prosecutor briefed him on new evidence. “The case had remained unsolved. The prosecutor's office has worked very meticulously. We must proceed until the end of this investigation,” he said.
While the Doku family finally sees movement in a case involving high-profile suspects—including the son of a former governor—the legal process remains overshadowed by the friction between Ankara’s top political figures.
