Çağla Joker’s Suspected Murderer Apprehended

Source: “Çağla Joker’in Katili Yakalandı” (“The Murderer of Çağla Joker Apprehended”) Özgür Gündem, 25 April 2014. Accessed 27 April 2014. http://www.ozgur-gundem.com/?haberID=105454&haberBaslik=%C3%87a%C4%9Fla%20Joker%27in%20katili%20yakaland%C4%B1&action=haber_detay&module=nuce

The murder suspect who killed Çağla Joker and wounded Nalan has been apprehended.

Çağla Joker was gunned down and her friend Nalan was wounded in a home attack on April 21 in Daracık Street, Tarlabaşı, Beyoğlu, Istanbul. H.T., who escaped after his attack, was apprehended in Istanbul and taken to the Istanbul Police Headquarters. In his confession, H.T. said that he had gone to Joker’s home for sex and shot Joker and her friend upon learning that they were trans.

Çağla’s Murderer Turned Out To Be a Child

Source: Çetin Aydın. 2014. “Çağla’nın Katili Çocuk Çıktı” (“Çağla’s Murderer Turned Out To Be a Child”) Hürriyet, 25 April 2014. Accessed 27 April 2014. http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/gundem/26288519.asp

Two suspects, aged 17 and 19, were taken into custody in relation to the event in Beyoğlu two days ago when one person was killed and another wounded.

Officers from the Homicide Department of the Public Order Branch Office have started their investigation into the event [1] of the murder of İsmail Ö. (26), nicknamed [1] Çağla, and the wounding of Mehmet K. [1] (45) on April 22 during an armed assault into their home on the second floor of the 4-floor building in Tarlabaşı Boulevard.

Upon the examination of a security camera located on the street, police officers determined that the two people who were seen running away from the scene shortly after the assault were H.T. (17) and T.M. (19).

Determined to be hiding at an address in Bahçeşehir, H.T. was apprehended shortly afterwards with the gun used during the event by the officers from the Public Order Department. During the first interrogation, officers learned from H.T. the location where his friend, T.M., who was with him during the event, and apprehended T.M. during a second raid.

It has been learned from H.T. and T.M., the two suspects brought to the Headquarters for interrogation, that H.T. and T.M. agreed[2] on having sexual relations and went to the house in question, but changed their minds [1,2] and asked their money back. During the ensuing fight [1], H.T. realized the armed assault.

Of the two suspects taken to the Public Order Branch Office, H.T. was handed to the Child Branch Office since he was under 18 years of age.

Editor’s Notes:

[1] Readers who compare the news item from Özgür Gündem and that from Hürriyet may find that Hürriyet, a mainstream newspaper, employs a number of discriminatory writing strategies. On the one hand, both Çağla and Nalan’s gender identities as well as their self-identified personhoods are ignored (note the omission of Nalan’s name) and denied as nicknames (pseudo/false, in Turkish, “takma isim,” “a name mounted on after the fact”). As such, their selfhood assaulted and attempted to be erased, as the news item employs a common strategy of ‘calling upon’ the individuals not by their self-identified selves (deemed ‘unreal’ –invented, pseudo/false, mounted- by the text) but rather by the normative, cisgendered, boundary-full names they were given at birth. On the other hand, the murder of Çağla and the wounding of Nalan are downplayed time and again as an “event,” which was, according to the author and the editors, caused by the victim and the survivor who tricked the murder suspects. Yet the assailants are responsible for this murder caused by their transphobia –a transphobia deemed to be unquestionable and is shared, in symptoms and in consequences as demonstrated above, by the author, the editors, the newspaper, and the general public.

[2] The parties to the agreement were kept vague and the sole acting agents of the agreement under execution were depicted as H.T. and T.M. in the Turkish version of the text.