Background
Nazım Babaoğlu was a young reporter working in the Şanlıurfa office of the newspaper Özgür Gündem in the early 1990s. According to sources such as Bianet he was 19; his birth year is given as 1974 or 1975. In those years journalism in south-eastern Turkey carried heavy risks because of the armed conflict, and many journalists, publishing staff and distributors were attacked or disappeared.
What happened
Babaoğlu travelled to the Siverek district of Şanlıurfa on 12 March 1994 to follow a story and was never heard from again. According to accounts relayed by the press and human rights groups, a local journalist phoned the paper's Urfa office saying he had an important story about village guards and asked for a reporter; that person later denied making the call. Witness accounts say Babaoğlu was taken from a business in Siverek and put into a vehicle. These accounts have not been confirmed by a court.
His family and colleagues filed applications for years to establish his fate. Journalists and relatives of the disappeared remember him every year among those lost in the 1990s.
Investigation and legal process
The file was closed in October 1994 on the grounds that no perpetrator could be found. It resurfaced in later years. In 2011 a convict wrote in a fax to the Urfa Bar that Babaoğlu had been abducted and killed; this claim has not been proven in court. A confidentiality order was placed on the file in 2021, and in March 2024 the case was reported to have reached the statute of limitations. The family applied to the Constitutional Court and then to the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that no effective investigation had been carried out; according to the latest reports the application is pending in Strasbourg. Babaoğlu's body has never been found.
Where it stands today
Relatives of the disappeared who ask about his fate, along with press organisations, commemorate him each year. The file is one of the frequently cited examples in debates about press freedom and impunity for enforced disappearances. His family calls for his burial place to be disclosed and for an effective investigation.
His disappearance is cited as one of the few documented cases of enforced disappearance in Turkey in which a journalist was the target.