MANISA — 2015 · Murder

Meral Babacan Murder

Under InvestigationSources: ALast updated: 14 October 2026

Meral Babacan was found dead by the roadside in Manisa on 6 July 2015 while walking to work after getting off a bus. Early inquiries suggested she may have been struck by a vehicle, but the vehicle, which had left the scene, and its driver could not be found for years, and the file remained unsolved. About 11 years later the gendarmerie's crime investigation team, JASAT, reopened the case. A fragment of a side-mirror frame recovered at the scene was used to identify the make and model of the vehicle, which was found to have been sold in 2017 to a person in Şanlıurfa. Following the investigation, a suspect was caught and arrested in 2026. The case, solved from a single small piece of evidence, was reported as an example of tracing techniques in old investigations. Because proceedings are ongoing, the suspect has not been named publicly.

Date: 2015
Place: Yunusemre, Manisa
Category: Murder
Case Status: Under Investigation
Coordinates: 38.7000, 27.6200 ↗

Timeline of Events

6 July 2015Meral Babacan was found dead by the roadside while walking to work.
2015-2025No perpetrator was found and the case went cold.

2026JASAT traced the vehicle from a mirror-frame fragment.
2026A suspect was caught and arrested.

Sources

Source grade A: several independent sources, at least one an official record or reference work. If you spot a mistake or something missing, report it with "Suggest a correction" in the app.