By Nazlan Ertan
In Turkish, zehirlenme or poisoning is one of those words that lands with a sting. Its genealogy stretches back through Ottoman Turkish to Persian zahr (poison), but the word has given birth to colorful idioms: zehir saçmak (to scatter venom), zehir zemberek sözler (barbed words that blister on impact), ağzı zehir gibi (a tongue sharp enough to wound). And then, as though the language suddenly felt guilty, it offers one luminous exception: “zehir gibi.” Sharp as poison, meaning a quick mind, a fast grasp, a wit that lands before the explanation does.
OTTOMAN POISONS
History, for its part, has never quite shaken its own suspicions. The Ottoman palace was a fertile ground for whispered allegations of poison, sometimes grounded in symptom lists that read like early toxicology reports. The most contested case is Mehmed II, or, as the Turks prefer, Mehmet the Conqueror, whose sudden death in 1481 prompted centuries of debate. Chroniclers described symptoms consistent with poisoning, and later historians revived the theory, though no definitive proof emerged.
His son Şehzade Mustafa died young under circumstances that fed similar rumors. Claims of attempted poisoning preceded Sultan Ibrahim’s erratic behaviour and downfall; Abdülhamid II was said to have survived at least one attempt involving tainted food, which did not exactly help his paranoia. And then there is the porcelain legend: celadon bowls (as you’d see on display at Topkapı Palace) allegedly changed color in the presence of poison, a superstition repeated for generations, untroubled by chemistry’s refusal to cooperate.
MODERN POISONS
This week, zehirlenme returned to the news not as a metaphor but as a persistent headline. The Böceks, a German-Turkish family of four staying in a modest hotel in Fatih, downtown Istanbul, grew violently ill overnight and managed to reach a taxi. The security footage shows the mother slumped against the window, a child vomiting into a plastic bag, and the father pleading with the driver for speed. The children died first, then the mother. Then, after a brief fight for survival, the father also passed away on Nov. 18.
At first, investigators eyed food: midye (ah, mussels are always a suspect given pollution), kokoreç, lokum, tea with soda. Four vendors were arrested, as if Istanbul’s street-food culture had been placed on trial. But the investigation soon pivoted. The initial forensic report pointed instead to aluminium phosphide, a pesticide used in the hotel’s fumigation, a chemical so potent that a few breaths of its gas can overwhelm the body.
The timeline hardened: the family left the hotel at 4 p.m.; fumigation began at 5 p.m.; they returned around 8 p.m.: well within the danger window. Eleven people were detained, including the hotel owners and the pest-control firm. The hotel was sealed. The story’s contours shifted from mystery to preventable disaster.
POISONS - REAL OR IMAGINED
If the Ottoman court supplied the mythology of poison, modern Turkey provides the anxieties. The modern era has its own poison lore, none more enduring than the suspicions surrounding President Turgut Özal’s death in 1993.
His sudden collapse at the Çankaya Mansion came at a politically charged moment — Özal was pushing a peace initiative with the PKK, challenging military prerogatives, and remapping Turkey’s regional posture. The chaotic response that followed, from the absence of an immediate medical team to the inexplicable decision not to perform an autopsy, left a vacuum that rumor eagerly filled. When his body was exhumed in 2012, forensic experts found traces of banned pesticides such as DDT metabolites but ultimately declared the results inconclusive due to tissue degradation. His son Ahmet has long insisted his father was “killed,” without committing to a specific method — a phrasing that kept the suspicion alive without anchoring it to toxicology. The combination of timing, bureaucratic irregularities, and political enemies ensured that zehirlenme remained part of the story, whether or not poison was ever present.
About ten years later, Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit’s sudden collapse in 2002 inspired its own wave of speculation (much whispered, never substantiated) that his incapacitation arrived too neatly in the run-up to a political realignment.
Even the living have not escaped the narrative. Over the past decade, reports have claimed that President Erdoğan took precautions against poisoning, from specialised food-safety equipment at the Presidency to an entourage trained in chemical screening. Parliamentarians raised formal questions; domestic and international outlets quoted unnamed sources. No evidence of an actual attempt ever emerged, but the idea lodged itself in the public imagination all the same. In Turkey, the fear of poison can be as potent as any toxin.
Turkey has seen its share of real poisonings as well. In 2020, at least 80 people died across several provinces after drinking counterfeit rakı and vodka tainted with methanol. In 2017, more than 700 soldiers in Manisa were hospitalised after eating contaminated chicken at their barracks. Schools in multiple provinces have weathered outbreaks from spoiled milk. And every winter brings fatal carbon-monoxide leaks, quiet poisonings that arrive with cold fronts and faulty stoves.
In a country where zehirlenme inhabits etymology, idiom, history and headline in equal measure, the word feels less like a medical term than a cultural barometer: anything can happen anytime.
