Background
In May and June 1998, three furniture shop owners were killed at their workplaces in the Esenler and Bağcılar districts of Istanbul. The events soon came to be called the 'Furniture-Maker Killer' case in the press. According to reports, the first incident took place in Esenler on 5 May 1998, the second in Bağcılar on 4 June and the third in Esenler on 6 June.
All three incidents were reported to have happened in the basement of the shops, each involving a firearm. This similarity strengthened the view that the events might be the work of one person, and police handled the investigation as a single file.
The investigation
The turning point was the discovery of a mobile phone belonging to one of the victims in the hands of another person. That person said he had obtained the device from a fellow townsman, and police followed this lead to the suspect and caught him at his home in Esenler the same evening.
The suspect pointed to an event he said he witnessed in childhood as the reason for his acts. However, press reports said the account was not corroborated in the reports presented to court, and that mental-health assessments found him fully criminally responsible.
Trial and aftermath
A high criminal court in Bakırköy sentenced the defendant to death three times. Because capital punishment was not being carried out in Turkey at the time, the sentences were later commuted to life imprisonment. Reports say the term was greatly reduced through good-conduct reductions, enforcement rules and an amnesty provision, and that he left prison. The exact date of release and which amnesty applied are not clear in public sources.
This process made the 1998 file part of the debate in Turkey on how long sentences for serious crimes are actually served.
Executions in Turkey have not been carried out since 1984, and the death penalty was abolished for peacetime offences in 2002. Death sentences handed down in the 1990s were therefore never carried out; their later conversion to life imprisonment follows from that legal framework.
Legacy
The Furniture-Maker Killer file is referred to as one of the first serial-murder cases presented as such in Istanbul and appears regularly in compilations of serial murders in Turkey. Its legacy relates to both the safety of tradespeople and the enforcement of sentences.
This text is written with respect for those who lost their lives. Victims are not named, out of consideration for their relatives' privacy. The account relies on information from the press and court decisions.