Background
Esin Güneş was a primary school teacher working in Siirt. She was born in the Kurtalan district, studied primary school teaching at Siirt University, and married Güven Güneş in 2008. She reportedly began divorce proceedings in the second year of the marriage and had complained about her husband's violence.
What happened
On 24 August 2010 Esin Güneş was found dead at the bottom of a cliff in a picnic area known as Kale in Siirt. Her husband, Güven Güneş, said he had taken her there to reconcile and that she had lost her balance and fallen, or taken her own life. A taxi driver was also at the scene.
Investigation and legal proceedings
The file was first closed with a decision not to prosecute. Her family and women's organisations objected, kept pressing with their own evidence and requests, and the prosecutor eventually brought a murder case against the husband and the taxi driver. The trial resumed on 30 November 2011.
The Forensic Medicine Institute could not establish whether she fell or was pushed. The court therefore commissioned a report from three physicists at Middle East Technical University, which concluded that the probability of such a fall without an outside force was close to zero and that she had been thrown rather than had fallen. The husband's lawyers argued she suffered from vertigo.
On 13 March 2013 the Siirt Heavy Penal Court sentenced Güven Güneş to aggravated life imprisonment, which the court reduced to ordinary life imprisonment for good conduct. The taxi driver, Beşir Üzüm, was acquitted. The Court of Cassation upheld the conviction in June 2015, and the ruling was widely noted because it opened the way for university expert reports as evidence.
Where it stands today
The case is often cited in discussions about re-examining suspicious deaths of women and questioning deaths recorded as suicides. The physics-based method has been debated in similar cases, while the good-conduct reduction drew criticism from women's groups. Esin Güneş is remembered each year on the anniversary of her death by women's rights organisations.
The outcome described here rests on the conviction of Güven Güneş that became final; no accusation is made against anyone who was acquitted.